Does the player get in the way of a good storyline?

[J T]

I just watched this funny spoof of Skyrim and it reminded me of a post I've been meaning to make for awhile. The basic humor in that video is that the pacing of the action gets messed up because you have to stop for inventory management every 5 seconds.

What I've been thinking about lately though is the concept of pacing and story arc. I think that these are concepts we get from movies and books that are sort of lost in videogames by their very nature of being interactive. For example, the story of Link in a Zelda game is meant to be of a great hero that saves the princess Zelda and was helpful to various villagers along the way. What is left out though, is how Link (as I played him) also seemingly had a difficult to understand vendetta against clay pots because he smashed every single one he came in contact with. Every one. And if you were a villager, he had no problem entering your house unannounced, rummaging through all your stuff, and taking every last ruppee you had while you were attempting to be friendly and welcoming. My Link also suffers from a strange form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder where he has to push against every tombstone and block in the middle of an open area, which is reinforced by the fact that he occassionally finds secret passageways beneath them.

These do not seem like the actions of a great hero, but that is what happened in the story as the game played out.

In Half Life 2, my Gordon Freeman was a revolutionary, but whenever you talked to him he would not speak and would instead just run around the room, jumping on tables, and throwing boxes around with his gravity gun. It was seriously distracting, though everyone made a good effort to keep speaking steadily and calmly while Gordon had his silent fits. Despite his strange behavior in social interactions, he still did manage to provide a great deal of help in taking down the combine.

My point is, the more player freedom we have, the more we can screw up a nicely written story. We either awkwardly fit into the existing story, or we are forced into cut scenes that play like movies that aren't really games. But nobody can plan for everything the player will do when we give them freedom. In fact, some players will play to break all the rules, act impulsively, and show little sign of interest in the matters at hand for the story development. I'm not sure how game designers are supposed to get around this, but it's very hard to have pacing and timing in a storyline when the player has no sense of that rhythm.

[Menegrothx]

I think that the Gordon Freeman model as you put it is a lot more immersive way to tell a story than cut scenes that literally drag you out from the gameplay. I quit playing Metal Gear Solid 2 because of the overly long cutscenes.

Video games should stop trying to be like movies and do their own unique thing. A game should tell its story in way which fits well into the game, not in a way that is popular in mainstream movies or books.

[Flake]

Games are a terrible medium for telling a story. By definition, a video game requires a player to interact with elements on the screen in order to affect the outcomes of any presented situation, within context.

When the context is something simple like negotiating blocks through a puzzle or getting an avatar from the left of the screen to the right, the story can be used as a simple framing device to add significance to your gaming time. If you look at the franchises that have endured for decades now, they are the games that applied very basic (and static) narrative to the gameplay.

Nowadays, gamers are starting to expect that the narrative elements increase in complexity and sophistication along with the graphics, controls and audio. The problem with this (as you can see with a game like Fallout 3 or the more recent Mass Effect) is that when the story BECOMES part of the gameplay, the limitations of the medium became apparent and any inadequacies on the part of the developer (who is trying to be an author or film director instead of a developer) are magnified.

[AppleQueso]

It's one of the many reasons I don't think video games are necessarily a good storytelling medium.

video games are great at crafting experiences, sure, but not at telling stories.

[Erik_Twice]

If the player gets in the way of the storyline, why is he there in the first place? That's the real question to me. To me, one of the golden rules of game design should be "do not allow a player to play in a boring way".

Anyways, I think the problem is not so much that the player gets in the way of a good storyline, not at all. Rather, I think that a good storyline in a videogame can only arise from good use of the player. Getting a B-grade movie and splitting it between levels does not a storyline make!

Anyways, stuff like storylines or characters are overrated, they are just tools and you can create a great thematic experience without them. See Castlevania or Diplomacy.

[Cronozilla]

The main issue isn't that games can't tell stories (of course they can) ... it's that they keep trying to tell them like a movie tells them.

At best, most games play out like a choose your own adventure novel. You make a choice here or there and then you observe the consequences.

Games aren't very good at that. If you wanted to sit and watch something, you'd just watch a movie.

Instead, games excel at experiencing the story. What this means is it actually needs to be far more fleshed out, because you don't explicitly know what the player will or won't experience. You can express narrative through many means, not just a cut scene or talking to people through dialog trees.

Portal 2, The future of game story telling?:

The most recent example I can think of that does this well is probably Portal 2. Everything there is a story element. From the way the place looks to how the equipment is designed, and the character's dialog, of course. Games should go along this path, but allow more freedom in the interactions so the player is actually creating a story as they go ... but it would still be within the confines of several arcs the developers could define. (but again it's more work)

One thing that is certainly true is that, usually, in a game, if you are shown something happening it just doesn't have as much of an effect as allowing the player to do it.

If the good writing technique moniker is "show, don't tell" ... then a similar moniker for games should be "do, don't show".

Even a very complex story can be told in this sort of framework, the only difference is this is a rather new methodology and there's almost no literature on the subject (sadly).

Obviously, there's pitfalls that a lot of games fall into (like ambiguity not letting the player know what they should be doing) but they're actually design issues, not story telling issues.

And I think if a player feels like what they want to do in a game is getting in the way of the story the game is telling ... then the developers failed miserably somewhere.

Thoughts on the path needed to be taken:

It would be significantly more interesting to see consequence actually happen in the world, but this requires some actually sophisticated AI (not just path finding junk) and some heavy procedural generation of content. If the AI could build goals and new paths within their relationship trees ... you'd have a framework for an amazing game.

Imagine, there's no clock counting down for you to go save the king ... but if you don't make it ... he's dead. And you can't bring him back. The world changes due to this. You can create a basic goal for the main enemy of the game ... while always refining that goal dynamically so while the end result is always the same ... the path there will vary wildly DIRECTLY because of what the player chooses to do.

This was something I was working on in school, but I actually didn't get very far, I have been meaning to bring the topic back up and doing some more research into the group AI theory behind it.

[Menegrothx]

I just watched an intresting seminar by a professional game developer. Sadly it wasnt in english so I cant link it in here. Anyways what he saying is that basically video games and storytelling are a paradox. He talked alot about how people tell stories in real life, in books and how movies are edited from 200 hours of rough material into the actual 90 minute - 2 hour movie. The real time aspect and interactivity of video games destroy the traditional story telling aspect.

[J T]

Certain stories lend themselves well to videogames. If it is a story about exploration, completing a task, or escaping something dangerous; games do those kinds of stories well because that is often what the game mechanics ask you to do. Take Shadow of the Colossus as an example. I consider it to be one of the better videogaming stories because the intro establishes your motivation (bring Mono back to life to save her from her cursed destiny) and your goals (find and kill Colossi for a magical bargain to bring Mono back).

From that point on, the story is just what you do.

You EXPLORE and struggle to survive a lonely, isolated, and dangerous world while you hunt colossi and COMPLETE THE TASK of killing them (which is like a puzzle in the gameplay mechanics). The premise is simply, but the story is rich because it is what you live throughout the course of the game. Videogame storytelling of this nature is more analogous to improv acting than it is to movie cinematography. You know your motivation and your purpose and then whatever you do to fulfill it is your story.

Minecraft is another great game for self-generating stories. Your motivation is to create and stay alive in a harsh world. Some of the best stories I've heard out of gaming have been recounts of people's journeys through Minecraft. Things just happen... like you strive to create a boat, and on its maiden voyage you stray too far from land and have to go ashore at night in an unfamiliar area. You get ambushed by a horde of skeletons that tear you apart with arrows. As you narrowly escape with your life and munch on your last pork chop you find shelter in a cave where you begin tunneling and crafting to find shelter for the night until it is safer to go out again, but while you are focused at work on your crafting bench, you suddenly hear that old familiar hiss and BOOOM! A horde of creepers have blown apart the west wall.

These kinds of game don't require minimal use of text and cinematics. They simply put you in interesting situations where what you are doing is interesting and the stories will effectively write themselves.

Nevertheless, I think the best written videogame is probably Deus Ex: Human Revolution which has a ton of text and cut scenes. But I think I'll save that for another post in the future.

[Menegrothx]

Nevertheless, I think the best written videogame is probably Deus Ex: Human Revolution which has a ton of text and cut scenes. But I think I'll save that for another post in the future.

Is it really better than the original? I havent had time to play it very far, but from what I have gathered, its great, but not as good as Deus Ex.

[FiftyDollarCurse]

If there is a story being told in my game that is compelling enough to sit and listen to then I will do so.