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Posted By Shaun K. about 7 months ago
Thumb Wars: Episode 13: Story in Video Games,
Episode 13: Story in Video Games
Welcome back to the show where we introduce the debate and you continue it. This week’s topic: Shaun & special guest writer/producer/actor Petros L. Ioannou tackle the topic of storytelling and writing in video games past and present.
For information on the webseries My Life as a Video Game starring Petros L. Ioannou and Brent “Brentalfloss” Black head right here. The Kickstarter for the webseries can be found here.
Thumb Wars is a weekly show hosted/produced by Shaun Kronenfeld dedicated to starting and encouraging dialogue and debate on a wide variety of topics within the video game industry. Look for a new Thumbs Wars every Sunday. Comments, opinions, and thoughts are not only welcome, they are the entire point. Feel free to follow Shaun on Twitter @bigred_13 if you feel so inclined.
Pretentious bullshit, just like Cloud Atlas and Journey.
Journey by the way, was boring. After fifteen minutes I was ready to fall asleep and no longer bothered with it.
You can have the greatest, and most “challenging” story ever; but if you can’t entertain your audience long enough for them to finish the game and experience it; it won’t matter.
Any story told, regardless of the medium, needs to be engaging and thus entertaining enough people will actually want to start, and finish it.
also sorry for he double post thing.
I dont think Dear ESther is a good example. You now…no gameplay id say. Just like watching a dvd and choosing the schapters from the menu.
BAstion would be my example. Youve got…voiceover telling you the story…Music and graphics to set the mood and…gameplay…
NOw for linear vs. non linear. Both things can be used to tell a good story. Not a good movie though, because like you said you have to make certain choices wich ways to go and so on.
The problems some games seem to have with this is sometimes the writers have their favourite storyline. Just a human thing to have, right? So most often this is the one that gets most attention. Now you take another one and it lacks this attention.
Dear Esther is for me not a good example. Bastion for example is better. Youve got the voiceover, youve got a certain mood through visuals and music and…GAMEPLAY.
I mean dear esther could be just like that a dvd, and you choose chapter after chapter in the menu.
Also…what about point and click adventure games?
Plus…what is the difference between an interactive novel and a videogame? Id say it cant be to just…the producer says its a game so its a game? A game is something to play, not to watch, or am i wrong here?
I agree that Horror is best told through a video game. The reason being is because it has all the time it needs to tell an effective story as well as adding it’s own visuals instead of, for example, a horror novel’s reliance on the reader’s imagination. Without a 2-hour time constraint films typically have and the fact you are able to experience the fear first-hand as the player, Horror is the one story genre that simply can’t be topped in any format other than video games.
Besides, when’s the last time you ever heard of someone dropping a book and fleeing in terror over a ghost story they read in a book? Games give you the story, the visuals, and the feeling of actually being the one experiencing the horror.
I hold Video Games above all other forms of entertainment, and one of the reasons is that I find the stories these games present to being very interesting, even when there not well executed, or overly convoluted or too simple. Its just a thing for me that I enjoy how each game implements it differently and the ways it can give you more control over the story, like how you can choose when and sometimes how the story progresses. How little parts of the story that might be unimportant can still be found if you go off the beaten path or revisit old locations. Games can do so much in the ways of presenting a story, and so far have barely tapped the surface. One thing though, a lot of people rag on stories in games that try to be like movies, sure there is more you can do, but I feel this has its place in games, just as linear and non-linear stories do, time and place for everything.
Lately I’ve been wondering what an animated series based on Final Fantasy 6 would be like … just because I’m a nerd like that. (Hell, I’m a storyteller myself; just look at http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Adam-Part-Path-Envale/dp/1424179505/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350999294&sr=1-9&keywords=jason+hubbard ).
In imagining how such a TV series could retell FF6′s story, I was struck by how certain things would have to be changed to compensate for the different medium. Some things the game developers got away with could not be done in an animated series. Actually, it’s debatable whether or not the developers got away with such things.
For example, Sabin and Cyan have the wild boy, Gao, take them to Gao’s “shiny treasure,” which turns out to be a diving helmet. Using this one helmet, all three characters are able to swim down a deep-water trench to a faraway town. In a TV series, the “shiny treasure” would have to be a submarine that some people must have left behind for some reason; there’s just no bones about it. It would be impossible to justify, in a TV series, how one diving helmet could be used by three people all at once.
And what about Ultros? Have you seen him in FF 13-2? He’s huge! Which begs the question: How the hell did he get to the rafters of the opera house without anyone noticing? And that 10-ton weight he threatens to drop? Makes you go “WTF!” right? In a series, maybe Ultros could still get to the rafters, but he’d do other things like dropping sandbags or something.
There are other things, too; little things such as Kefka going to see the two Espers in the factory. Instead of talking to himself, he could be yelling at a factory worker, demanding to know whether or not the Espers really have been sapped of all magic. He could also confront Terra in the battle in Narshe, just to bring some closure to their relationship before the rest of the story continues.
Indeed, video games have come a long way in storytelling, letting visuals tell the story rather than have writers let the characters explain everything and by utilizing cheap visual shortcuts. For example, a great big Reaper in slow motion has more impact than a simple 16-bit Reaper would. And speaking of Mass Effect, those games do a great job of explaining why characters are in certain situations, thus justifying why certain situations are the way they are (something ME3′s original ending didn’t do very well).
I think the argument at 4:40, where Mass Effect story took 3 games to tell rather than Final Fantasy 6 only took one game to tell, therefore gaming now is better or deeper or more complex, is wrong. Sure Mass Effect had three games to tell a potentially bigger story and had more time to include things but that doesn’t mean it was good, or was any better than Final Fantasy 6. Quantity does not equal quality.
Skyrim’s overall story was really linear. And I don’t think open world games get a pass on this. Skyrim’s story was bad there’s no excuse because it’s a sandbox game. I don’t buy Shaun’s argument that the open world aspect is stronger while the story suffers. A strong story doesn’t detract from the open nature of these types of games and their inclusion is not a hindrance. Morrowind had a stronger single story and it made the world deeper, more involving and seem more cohesive.
To be fair, I never said Mass Effect’s story was better or deeper because it said it took three games to tell it. The truth is I was talking about personal investment in a story and length of story. Because you explore this story in Mass Effect, you’ve got more personal investment, because that’s your character and you’ve been with him/her for three pretty big games. I can understand from the audio how that could be misconstrued though.
I think Mass Effect might have suffered from continual installments. Maybe not a lot of people would agree with me here on that but lets take another example.
Halo. Does Halo’s story really benefit from all these new games that come out? Does one really gain anything from the prolonged expansion of an already thin and weak story? I don’t think so.
Well that’s why I think Shepard’s story ends with ME3. If they continue it further, they’ll suffer diminishing returns, especially if you’re using the same character as before. The only real flaw in Mass Effect’s trilogy format for me was that you really had to play all three games to enjoy it and until recently the original wasn’t available on anything by XBox and PC.
Perhaps the next generation will see a new Mass Effect trilogy but with a new character and new time period and story to explore.
I cringed a bit when I heard Dear Esther get praised once again. I’d argue it’s an example of something that takes very little advantage of the storytelling benefits video games have.
I have to stop quoting Jim Sterling so much, but he really says it best when he describes Dear Esther as “A game full of things to look at, but never touch, full of story you’re not allowed to be part of”.
I still have yet to see anyone give me a decent answer when I ask them, “Why should I give the slightest shit about Dear Esther when I can name numerous games that have just as if not more appealing aesthetics, are more well-written, and actually take advantage of the benefits that come with being interactive and, you know, ENGAGING!? When it comes to ‘immersive, artistic games’ I’d much sooner play Ico, Lone Survivor, Journey, Killer 7, Silent Hills 1-4, and a laundry list of other titles before a dull, drawn-out drudge fest like Dear Esther.”
“It tells a story through visual ways, it tells it through mood.”-Sean
You know what else was able to do that? EVERY OTHER game I just listed in the above quotation and those games were able to do that without being as dull and unengaging as grey coated tapioca! There isn’t anything done in Dear Esther that hasn’t already been done much better by other ‘atmospheric, storydriven’ games.
I’m in agreement when you two say games should be more than just ‘fun’, but I think people who defend stuff like Dear Esther are confusing ‘not fun’ with just ‘unengaging’. Geoff’s article on this subject of fun in games claims anyone who found Silent Hill 2 to be ‘fun’ was, “either a liar or a masochist” and that is very true. ( http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/04/moving-forward-fun-doesnt-always-mean-good/2/ ).
HOWEVER, while fighting off hideous monsters with sluggish controls and solving obtuse, confusing puzzles isn’t ‘fun’ to most sane people, it can be considered engaging and it’s the right type of engagement for a game like Silent Hill 2 since horror games should be gruelling and torcherous experiences. A game like Dear Esther has none of that, the player gets little to no engagement from the game’s interactive elements and nothing is told through that interactivity either.
Anyway, I personally don’t think there is a right answer to telling a linear story VS. a non-linear story. Just like how there are good and bad books written from both 1st and 3rd person perspectives, I can name good and bad examples of linear and non-linear storytelling in games. I think taking away either would impede game’s creativity.
Lastly, I have no problem with a game not being based around combat/punching/stabbing, but even something like To the Moon had a segment where the player fought back zombies with potted plants in a school hallway (and make no doubt, that segment was AWESOME!). So I don’t see how the number of times someone punches, slices, or shoots someone is a way of determining a game’s artistic merrit (I doubt that’s what you two meant when you asked, “when was the last time I played a game where I didn’t punch/slice/shoot something?”, but that’s how it came across).
Well, this is a topic I’ve discussed a lot on another site, the forum I spend most of my online time on. However, I fall into much the opposite opinion camp from you two.
When you talk about games telling their stories like movies versus trying to give the players choice, I very much so say the former is superior. Why? Because I feel that the latter weakens the stories, in a number of ways. One being how it affects the writers – they cannot write a focused story, where each event ties together and builds on the themes they want, and develops the characters the way they want, when they have to do that. They essentially have to write multiple stories for the same game, especially if the choices have consequences that aren’t just isolated to a particular sub-plot, which reduces the overall impact of the story in my opinion.
Tied to that is the matter of the games’ main character. Often in a game that tries to give the player choices you have a main character who is a create-a-character, a blank slate for the player to fill in – see every Bioware game, for instance. I’m continually surprised that it needs to be pointed out, but that substantially weakens the story. When the character that the game centers on has no set personality driving their actions or development to go through, there’s much less to their story. It’s why Bioware’s main plots always need to center on some massive threat that cannot be ignored – they need something that everyone will want to stop, no matter what they decide their version of the main character is like. Which, ultimately, results in Bioware’s sub-plots and companion characters being far stronger than their main stories in my opinion. Mordin Solus and Legion are stronger characters with better stories written around them than Commander Shepard and the Reaper invasion could ever have been because of this, just to name the most obvious examples from those games.
To try and cut this short since I need to leave for work, I’ll skip to the whole Journey thing you brought up. While I haven’t played Journey, I did just this year play another game that I’ve heard similar praise for, Shadow the Colossus. And frankly, if that’s an example of that sort of thing, I’m not impressed. That didn’t seem like a story so much as an outline of one, with no details filled in. You don’t know anything about the characters, nor the context within which the events occur. I’ve seen it said that this makes it open to interpretation, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all to me – it just makes it incomplete, leaving basically fan fiction to fill in the gaps, if anyone cares to. That is not something I can praise, at all.
It may be true that opening up player choices might diminish the story, however, the reverse is also true: reducing player choices in order to accommodate the story diminishes the gameplay. Reduce enough of the player choices and you end up with a game that really is little more than a movie. And while there may be nothing wrong with a movie, when I’m playing a game, I want to play the game. Give me options; let me make decisions and perform actions, and let those choices and actions shape both my character and the world around him. Because that’s the point of it being a game instead of a movie: you’re the one doing it.
Some of my favorite games do in fact have pretty strong stories. For example, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono-Trigger. However, the best story-driven games still need to give the player choices, and to let the characters actions affect the world around them. Without that aspect, you might as well be watching a movie instead of playing a game.
In my opinion, a good strong story is a very good thing. But in a video game, the story really is at best a part of the framework for the gameplay; it should serve primarily to give the player an immersive gaming experience. But limiting player choices does the opposite.
While I would agree that you can definitely see how making a game nonlinear could hurt a story, as well as allowing the player to make his or her character diminishes the actual character.
I think the nonlinear story could actually be told very well. It seems to me that since writers in the gaming industry are basically just contractors that are told to make a story for the game and then is told to leave one they are done, there just hasn’t been a developer making a nonlinear game who wanted to put the effort into making each possible path into a compelling narrative.
As for the issue with the player created character, I think there are multiple ways that the developer can give the player a voice in the game.
1. Some games try to make the player feel more involved by making the protagonist silent. These games have the benefit of letting the player essentially fill in the blanks of what his or her character might feel at this moment. The main problem with this choice is that it creates a non-character. If you take a step back, the character who’s silent really has no personality to begin with, so from an outsider view the protagonist is really just a placeholder. Some developers will even use this practice to trick the player feel like they have influence in the game, such as the use of the character creator, but really the player effects very little.
2. The Bioware method is to give the player defined choices in what the protagonist does and says. Some players are able to create character progression through this system, but players who simply try insert themselves to the game by picking what they believe they would do or players who just aren’t good writers, come out with something that could never be seen from another’s perspective as a good character.
3. This is a method that I have not personally witnessed in a game, if you know of a game that uses this method then please tell me what it is, and if this is an original idea of mine, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m going into game design. You can have the player visually create the character and through the gameplay give the player a lot of small choices. The game would then keep track of these choices, and with them define your character as well as how the world sees you. Then at specific moments of the game, you would lose control of your character, and the character would act depending on the personality you have set for him or her through your actions in the game. Each of these outcomes would have different results with no clear “bad” option. Maybe in one instance your character is unable to save a character who you like and they are killed. Every option would be made by your prior choices and give you benefits and consequences in the story for each. If the player decides that the consequences weren’t worth it, it would make the player want to change his behavior. If the game was able to do that, it would actually urge the player to have the protagonist character actually evolve as a character.