Why storytelling doesn't work in some games

[him over there]

Okay so I know that here we often say that one of the big things a game should do is blend storytelling and gameplay together. However the more I think about this the more conflicting the two entities seem. gameplay by its very nature must be engaging, and it is engaging through being visceral, fun or exciting usually. Storytelling uses empathy and emotion from all over the spectrum to create engagement. But sometimes those things tend to obviously conflict with eacho ther by their very nature.

Take for instance Metal Gear Solid. MGS is a dark gritty story about the horrors and futility of war. Of course in order to be committed to the story the player have to be committed to the game. For this to happen there needs to be engaging gameplay. However MGS's gameplay is visceral, fun, and extremely exciting, furthermore you play in the guise of the main character and by the very nature of the game you must constantly succeed. The entire tone of the story, and therefore the message it's trying to convey, is completely undermined by the fact that you are having tons of fun as the man who is supposed to be tragic and also think that he's amazing because you are always winning. The fun (or entertainment if you want to be a little more specific) means it is impossible to extrapolate how depressing or bleak the story is because you're to busy thinking Solid Snake is the coolest guy you've ever met and having sniper duels is cool.

Another game this happens in is No More Heroes. in NMH Travis is a disgusting, immoral all around terrible human being that you wished got his ass handed to him. However because of the traditional conventions of a game and the fact that you play as him you succeed and grow attached to him. You love the horrible person and hate the good people because you are the terrible person and you completely miss any semblance of Travis being pathetic (the whole point because he's a stereotypical "otaku") because he always succeeds by means of being the protagonist.

 

[Zhukov]

So change the gameplay to match the tone of the story.

Gameplay doesn't have to be action-y and exciting to be good.

 

[tippy2k2]

Story telling doesn't work in some games when the story teller is bad. A good video game story teller WILL make the story good AND make it relevant to game-play.

With your examples:
No More Heroes: I did not play this (going off of reviews) so I could be incorrect but the story is barely there. Basically, the story is there as a thinly veiled excuse to give Travis Touchdown a reason to murder all these people.

Metal Gear: I 100% disagree with you on this one. I just finished MGS4 not too long ago and Solid Snake, even during gameplay, feels like a person who is just tired. He grunts loudly when doing physical activity, he arcs his back to try to stretch when you've been crouching for too long, and he really really wants to have a smoke but shouldn't. I think it's fun because it's an engaging story and an interesting character; NOT because I get to murder a bunch of people.

The problem is that there are a lot of BAD stories in gaming. You get someone who knows how to balance the story and the game-play out and you can get a good game with a good story no matter who your character is.

This is why I think people consider Call of Duty 4 to be such a good game (and why they got disappointed as the other sequels forgot). Yahtzee said it best when he said that the game-play doesn't sacrifice story and the story doesn't sacrifice the game-play; they both have their place and they sync up together in ways that most game writing fails to do.

 

[Vault101]

thats why its good to keep gameplay and "story"/cutscenes consistant with each other

EDIT: which makes me think of Red dead redemption....I mean its suposed to be about how john marston is justing begrudgingly doing what he has to..yet he can also go around shooting, looting all he wants...

 

[him over there]

Story telling doesn't work in some games when the story teller is bad. A good video game story teller WILL make the story good AND make it relevant to game-play.

With your examples:
No More Heroes: I did not play this (going off of reviews) so I could be incorrect but the story is barely there. Basically, the story is there as a thinly veiled excuse to give Travis Touchdown a reason to murder all these people.

Metal Gear: I 100% disagree with you on this one. I just finished MGS4 not too long ago and Solid Snake, even during gameplay, feels like a person who is just tired. He grunts loudly when doing physical activity, he arcs his back to try to stretch when you've been crouching for too long, and he really really wants to have a smoke but shouldn't. I think it's fun because it's an engaging story and an interesting character; NOT because I get to murder a bunch of people.

The problem is that there are a lot of BAD stories in gaming. You get someone who knows how to balance the story and the game-play out and you can get a good game with a good story no matter who your character is.

This is why I think people consider Call of Duty 4 to be such a good game (and why they got disappointed as the other sequels forgot). Yahtzee said it best when he said that the game-play doesn't sacrifice story and the story doesn't sacrifice the game-play; they both have their place and they sync up together in ways that most game writing fails to do.

The thing with No More Heroes is that it is a commentary on how much of a loser Travis (and people like him) are. He's just a ridiculously unpleasant person. But because playing as him is fun, functional and exciting that whole point is thrown totally out the window because you think he's awesome, especially since Travis always wins because he is the protagonist.

I'm glad you were able to enjoy Metal Gear Solid 4 straight faced, however it is clear that plenty of people miss the point. Have you seen all the straight faced "Snake is the sexiest man in the world/ Snake is superman" etc. type of stuff? The original Metal gear solid had sniper duels, psycho kinetic assassins and destroying a giant mecha with an rpg.

To quote Yahtzee: "This is a gmae. Games are fun!" Gameplay by its very nature is entertaining in order to be engaging. When you are entertained you are having fun and so may totally miss the point of something because fun and a negative story conflict.

It's sort of like making an anti war film. You can't make a perfect one because in order to engage the audience you have to have some sort of enjoyable aspect to it, whether that be the visceral violence or the relatable characters. No matter how aware of the message you are you miss out on it somewhat because you're enjoying it, yet must enjoy it in order to care about it.

Or maybe I'm over thinking this and what I'm really getting at is people taking "OMG LAZOR SWORDS GUISE" at face value.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Yep. See also: Bioshock.

Spoiler: The Story.

Spoiler: The Gameplay.

In other news, a lot of my favorite game stories are ones that designed the mechanics entirely around the narrative, and a lot of my favorite gameplay experiences are ones where the developers didn't let storytelling conventions get in the way of gameplay.

 

[tippy2k2]

The thing with No More Heroes is that it is a commentary on how much of a loser Travis (and people like him) are. He's just a ridiculously unpleasant person. But because playing as him is fun, functional and exciting that whole point is thrown totally out the window because you think he's awesome, especially since Travis always wins because he is the protagonist.

I'm glad you were able to enjoy Metal Gear Solid 4 straight faced, however it is clear that plenty of people miss the point. Have you seen all the straight faced "Snake is the sexiest man in the world/ Snake is superman" etc. type of stuff? The original Metal gear solid had sniper duels, psycho kinetic assassins and destroying a giant mecha with an rpg.

To quote Yahtzee: "This is a game. Games are fun!" Gameplay by its very nature is entertaining in order to be engaging. When you are entertained you are having fun and so may totally miss the point of something because fun and a negative story conflict.

It's sort of like making an anti war film. You can't make a perfect one because in order to engage the audience you have to have some sort of enjoyable aspect to it, whether that be the visceral violence or the relatable characters. No matter how aware of the message you are you miss out on it somewhat because you're enjoying it, yet must enjoy it in order to care about it.

Or maybe I'm over thinking this and what I'm really getting at is people taking "OMG LAZOR SWORDS GUISE" at face value.

WARNING: PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE MODE ACTIVATED! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED:

I hate being the "Oh those guys just didn't GET the story" (say this with Jim Sterling's "making fun of someone voice" for best affect) but you can't fault the game for that and I'll give an example of this outside of gaming.

Saving Private Ryan

How many people have demonstrated that they see this as just an awesome war movie? "The Normandy beach scene was awesome and did you see when that German stabbed the Jewish guy! Man, that was such a sweet movie!", they yell as the entire point of the movie flies right over their head...

Not everyone is going to be able to appreciate the story being told. Sometimes they don't get it and sometimes you undercut your own message by having a vampire as a bad guy and a guy who lost his arm who got taken over by your twin brother after getting your brothers arm attached to you because a cyborg ninja chopped it off...MGS games are kind of weird, aren't they?

PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE MODE DE-ACTIVATED

I do think that you're just seeing "dumb people not getting it" as the games fault. I could very well be wrong but I think that the good story telling games have demonstrated that it CAN be done. It's very difficult and the vast majority of games fail at this but they should never stop trying.

Hell, I can only think of Call of Duty 4 and MAYBE Half-Life as examples of story telling and game-play going off of each other really well. I'm sure there are other examples but I would think this demonstrates pretty well that most games fail at this. It's a young medium; game makers will figure it out eventually (or die trying; gaming gimmicks are running out since we can't really bump graphics up for much longer).

 

[geK0]

There was this person infront of me in line at gamestop who was returning DeadSpace a while back, his reasoning was "the story sucks! it's like resident evil in space!" and I couldn't help but facepalm.

I mean yes, to each their own, sure. But returning a game because it has a bad story is like returning a movie because it has a lousy soundtrack : \

I mean, Deadspace wasn't God's grace to man, but it was a pretty damn fun game overall. I mean, if he returned it because he just found it to be boring, fine; but because of the story? The story really wasn't even the major focus of the game.


anyway....

OT:

I like a good story in a game, but it should always always always be secondary to the actual game itself, otherwise I might as well just read a book or watch a movie. That's just my opinion though, there's plenty of people who prefer watching a game to playing it.

 

[Waffle_Man]

-snip-.

There is actually a term used to describe what you said: Ludonarrative Dissonance. It's comes from the idea that the more you author the context of a game, the more likely that there will be a contradiction between what the story is telling the player and what the player is doing. This could probably be deliberately used very well in the right circumstances, but I've only seen it ham-fistedly touched upon in a few indie titles.

While I would say that story telling can be done wrong, having a story adds a large amount to the context of the game.

which makes me think of Red dead redemption....I mean its suposed to be about how john marston is justing begrudgingly doing what he has to..yet he can also go around shooting, looting all he wants...

Am I seeing a reoccuring trend here?
"Hello, my name is Niko. I am haunted by all of the terrible things I did. Now please excuse me while I steal a car and shoot three prostitutes for no reason."

I mean yes, to each their own, sure. But returning a game because it has a bad story is like returning a movie because it has a lousy soundtrack : \

To be fair, if this had actually been in Saving Private Ryan...


...I'm sure that not everyone would have watched all of it.

I like a good story in a game, but it should always always always be secondary to the actual game itself, otherwise I might as well just read a book or watch a movie. That's just my opinion though, there's plenty of people who prefer watching a game to playing it.

With many games though, a story is just better left out entirely. A few lines in the manual will suffice, if anything. Look at the multitude of first person shooters out there with s***ity stories and relatively decent gameplay in many cases. Shooters are about one thing. Line up and shoot. A story, especially a poorly written one, only drags it down.

I'm not quite ready to say that the story of a game is as separable from the gameplay as one might think, though it might be more accurate to say that the context isn't.

To clarify, let me ask you this: Would there be absolutely any mechanical difference in a Mario game if everything was represented by colored squares? Or would there be any difference in call of duty if instead of aiming down the sights, you simply gain accuracy and snapped to the nearest target? Would there be any mechanical difference in Dwarf fortress if, instead of referring to a grey g on the screen as a goblin, it was simply a g that did stuff? No, but the feedback wouldn't be quite the same. There are theoretical games that existed long before video games that exist without a constructed context, but in that case, the context is the people playing. To put it simply, and sequence of events in a given context makes a story. Thus the only way of making a game without story is to give it no context, which would make it quite dull.

The reason authored story can be bad is because it can cause illogical and senseless developments in the story, which is exactly what the original post was about. In other words, you could almost say that it isn't bad story as much as it is a bad interpretation of the story.

 

[Something Amyss]

Take for instance Metal Gear Solid. MGS is a dark gritty story about the horrors and futility of war. Of course in order to be committed to the story the player have to be committed to the game. For this to happen there needs to be engaging gameplay. However MGS's gameplay is visceral, fun, and extremely exciting, furthermore you play in the guise of the main character and by the very nature of the game you must constantly succeed. The entire tone of the story, and therefore the message it's trying to convey, is completely undermined by the fact that you are having tons of fun as the man who is supposed to be tragic and also think that he's amazing because you are always winning. The fun (or entertainment if you want to be a little more specific) means it is impossible to extrapolate how depressing or bleak the story is because you're to busy thinking Solid Snake is the coolest guy you've ever met and having sniper duels is cool.

This just demonstrates how Hideo Kojima is bad at what he does.

It's not that it can't be done. It's just that HE didn't do it.

Well, the entire team, but since he gets all the credit, I just do the same with the blame.

 

[geK0]

-snip-

Well when I say story, I'm usually referring to cut scenes,dialogue,plot,narration etc (I like these things, but they shouldn't be prioritized over the game itself). What you described falls more under themes and aesthetics, which I think are at least as important as the games mechanics.

 

[Waffle_Man]

-snip-

Well when I say story, I'm usually referring to cut scenes,dialogue,plot,narration etc (I like these things, but they shouldn't be prioritized over the game itself). What you described falls more under themes and aesthetics, which I think are at least as important as the games mechanics.

But how do you separate the two? Dialogue, plot, narration, cut scenes are all simply means of increasing information available to the player about a given context. While you can certainly do without cut scenes, dialogue, or narration, does that really remove the story? Some of the best pieces of story in the fallout games are from arrangements of objects that suggest something that happened, without a single written word or fancy animation. Certainly it's authored, but it does so without being obtrusive or contradictory to the rest of the context because the context is what gives it meaning.

Note that I omitted plot from the list of things that can be done without because anything that has progression or change could be considered to have a plot.

 

[Vault101]

Am I seeing a reoccuring trend here?
"Hello, my name is Niko. I am haunted by all of the terrible things I did. Now please excuse me while I steal a car and shoot three prostitutes for no reason."

.

to be fair though...in the case of red dead redemption I hardly screwed around at all....not just because it didnt fit with the story...because it just got old, mabye thats me but often I wont screw around

or like in Fallout NV if ever I did go on a rampage I imedietly reloaded a save...it was just a surreal moment in between what I called the "real" story, because my charachter itsnt a murdering psychopath

 

[geK0]

-

I'm not saying those things should be removed, I'm just saying they shouldn't be the emphasis of the game. I feel like a lot of games lately just make me run between cut scenes instead of letting me just play.

Although they aren't that recent,Final FantasyXIII and the second half of metal gear solid4 are the best examples I can think of right now; they put an ass load of effort into the story and cinematics for both of those games and didn't really have a lot of quality gameplay between those cinematics. (At least MGS4 had great online play).

*note, I like the rest of the MGS series that I've played, I just found 4 to be particularly lacking in the single-player department*

Games like Bioshock, Fallout Ederscrolls, Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto however do a pretty good job of implementing a story without interrupting the game too much. I feel like those games prioritize actual gameplay while having story as a nice little thing on the side that you don't necessarily have to pay attention to in order to enjoy the rest of the game.

Then there's games like Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Megaman, Left for dead, Team Fortress, Pokemon and others where the story is basic or non-existent. I've seen plenty of people argue that games like this should improve their stories, and that games without a good story aren't worth playing, but I strongly disagree.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a game with a good story behind it (The final fantasy franchise was my favourite up until 13); I'm just saying that not all games need to have a good story to be good games.




And yes, all GTA protagonists are complete hypocrites and are completely impossible to sympathize with x D
I still love those games

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Just thought I'd give my two cents on MGS: One interpretation of MGS4 (that is shared) is that Kojima made it as silly as possible because he was sick of it all. Yet he still managed to make commentary on the commercialism of the whole thing. MGS 1 and 2 were commentaries on the stupidity of nuclear deterrence, the craziness of war, and idea of genetic ancestry affecting who you were as a person. MGS3 was more parody of spy fiction, but also had comments on the nature of patriotism.

Ok, I guess this is kind of irrelevant to your point OP so I'll get back on topic. Yes the gameplay of the MGS series does not reinforce the impact of the story to the player. However in-universe, the series does reference that Snake may as well have enjoyed himself as he killed (in one of Liquid's speeches IIRC), and the fact that Snake kills people (depending on how the player does such) does not run contrary to his character.

 

[him over there]

snip

Okay, let me see if I understand what you are saying. Are you essentially saying that simply through the act of playing a game a player writes his own story? Because that is exactly true.

Take Doom for instance. The story amounted to little more than a premise. Demons are invading from Mars. Kill them. That was as far as the authored narrative went. The rest was written by the player as he played the game.

Players Story:
Found shotgun. Located locked door. Found handgun ammo. Shot Imp with shotgun. Opened hidden door. Found key. Opened locked door. on and on to end of level.

There was no text, no VO, just the player playing the game. That's a story. A written narrative could be considered unnecessary and even a well written one might detract from the game.

If that's not what you're getting at then I'm afraid I don't understand...

To be honest, however, I am a big advocate of video games as a form of interactive fiction. Written narrative has a lot to do with that. I thought Mass Effect was the greatest and most progressive example yet of how an interactive, player driven story could be told... until they lost all integrity and f***ed up. It is the lackluster and disruptive stories in video games as of late that have led me to wish that developers would lay off on stories in their games until such a time as they're willing to get them right.

I wouldn't exactly say it's the player writing their own story though that is a huge strength for some games. It's more so that what makes an engaging story and what makes engaging gameplay often conflict. Going back to the MGS example people say it has great gameplay because it is really fun and exciting. Yet the story is supposed to be somber about the horrors of war, obviously there is a huge disconnect between the two. In order to make them match the gameplay and by proxy the players actions need to he somber and bleak as well. People would watch a bleak story because it is interesting from the outside. But gameplay that matched that would be terrible because nobody wants to actually play a terrible bleak somber game. Successful gameplay and a successful story have conventions that often work against eachother, assuming it is a serious or at least more adult story.

 

[geK0]

Weeeeeeel, sure a lot of times there are inconsistencies between what is seen in the narrative and what the player is allowed to do. That is just the result of sloppy writing in which the writer is disconnected from what the designers are doing. That is easily avoidable in any game.

Kinda goes back to my statement that sometimes stories just don't belong in certain games. Since the story of MGS doesn't mesh well with the game, then another story would have worked better... maybe even none at all.

I find that when you try to correct that though, you just get annoying things like "unsynchronizing youself" in Assassin's Creed where you get a game over for going on a random killing spree, or invulnerable NPCs in Oblivion and Skyrim (God that was irritating).