The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra's game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.
Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It's easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra's home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.
Introduction
Stories are
something that is very important to us humans and also a crucial part
of many video games. In some games the player is the author of the
story, for example in Civilization where you are given some basic start
resources and are then free to decide how your story will play out. In
other games the designer has the most control of the story and the game
mechanics do their best to guide the payer through the narrative (which
may dynamic or linear).
While the player-as-author stories are interesting, what I will discuss here is the type of stories that have been designed. Some people
have argued that games are inferior at telling these kind of stories,
something I do not agree with. While the games out today certainly do
not compete with stories found in books and movies, I believe that the
problem is that the medium is simply not been used correctly.
Plot-based Stories
Most
games that are story heavy tells a narrative using a linear plot; in
other words a string of events tied together by sections of gameplay.
Most games that have been celebrated for their story such as Half-life 2 and God of War
use this design. The concept is basically to force the player into
doing certain actions by limiting the amount of interactivity.
Because
this type of storytelling is based around forcing the player, it often
comes with a very high amount of cut-scenes. Whenever a plot event
requires an environment or situation where the player has too many
choices, it is no longer possible to keep it within gameplay; all (or
most) player control is taken away and a cut-scene is used. Some games
(like Resident Evil 4)
try and keep interactivity by using quick time events, but this has
always felt like a cop-out and unneeded trial-and-error to me . In
other games, like Half-life, these moments are handled by blocking the
player in some way until the scene is over. In all cases, the normal
gameplay is restricted and players cannot progress until the game lets
them.
I believe that plot-based story telling has reached its
limit*. A fusion of gameplay and story-telling the story can never
occur unless it is some type of action scene or in other ways tightly
connected to the gameplay. Whenever some emotional and story intense
scenario is needed it is showed as a cut-scene. Interactive scenes only
consists of very strict and standardized gameplay.
Plot-based
story telling is not without its merits though. It fits very well with
how it is done in movies and books and one can very easily use
practices from these. This makes it possible to plot the different
parts of the story early on and have things like characters arcs and
tempo quite easily. It is probably because of this that plot-based
storytelling is so widely used.
However, I personally find this
way of doing it very problematic as it clashes directly with the
unpredictability of games. For example, when we did the "meeting of Dr
Swanson" event in Penumbra Black Plague, it was very hard to make it all playable and had to have doors mysteriously closing and the like (click here
to see, spoilers ahead!!). When making Penumbra we had several other
similar problems all due to events that had to happen at specific
occasions in a very specific way. Every time we had to sacrifice some
part of the gameplay in order to solve it story-wise.
This is
troubling! When the most emotional and story-wise important scenes need
to rely on taking away interactivity something is very wrong. I think
the problem is simply that this type of storytelling is not the best
way of doing story in games.
Fragmented Stories
This
type of storytelling is evident in games like Bioshock, System Shock
and to some extent in many RPGs and normal adventure games. It is about
having a certain background story (or similar) spread out over the
world. The player must then find these fragments and piece them
together. These fragments usually come as notes or character dialogs,
each giving a piece of the "puzzle". It is this kind of storytelling
that we have mostly used for Penumbra and are using for our upcoming
game Amnesia. It is also where I think the future of interactive story telling lie.
Fragmented
storytelling allows for much more freedom as it is possible for the
player to pick up fragments in different order and even do miss certain
fragments without ruining the story. Some kind of order is usually
wanted to though, and normally it is solved by not having all fragments
available from starts, each level/section of the game containing
certain fragments. It is also possible to solve by procedural
generation of fragments. This can simply mean that the order of the
fragments are independent of the actual interactions (e.g. first note
picked is always a specific fragment), something we are using in
Amnesia. It can also mean more advanced ways such as generating
documents to fit the player, for example censuring certain information
in case the player has not found out about other things first. This
kind of procedural generation seem very exciting to me, yet it is very
unusual in games and I know of no other games that are using it
Fragments
does not only need to be text-heavy information such as dialog or
notes. It can be graphics in the environment, sounds, character banter,
interactions, etc. In Amnesia we try to use as many different types as
possible and do our best to create a game where playing and exploring
brings forward the story without ever removing control. The great thing
about the fragmented design is that it is never in the way of the game
and helps the player immerse, instead of the opposite (which cut-scenes
might do). When designing Amnesia we have also made sure that pretty
much everything is optional and instead of forcing the player to take
part of certain story elements (fragments) we have made sure to make
the most important things are really obvious (and hard to miss) and the
less important more hidden.
While the fragmented story design is
used quite a bit (especially as notes and dialog), I think that its
potential is severely underused. There is a lot more stuff that can be
done in this way. For instance, by interacting with the world the
player can find out things, not just about the environment, but about
the character too. How will the protagonist react when you try to eat
meat (vegetarian?), why does she gets scared when in confined spaces,
etc. It can also be about the environment itself, for example how
different things work (machines in a sci-fi story) or how the ecology
behave. It does not need to be related directly to the background story
either, but can be a way of showing character motivations, increase
understanding of the game world or just simply to set a certain mood or
convey a theme. In books and movies this usually take up large part,
almost always using plot-based story telling, and I think that a large
problem lies in designer trying to copy this design (something I have discussed before) instead of using techniques more suitable for games.
Plot-based
story telling does not need to be thrown out though and can still be
used effectivly. The problem with fragmented story telling is that it
only is only about the past and never about the present. Here
plot-based design can help to spice up the story telling. For example,
Bioshock, an otherwise pretty free-roaming game using fragmented
story-telling, has an important cut scene (check here,
spoilers of course) that even use the lack of interactivity as part of
the story. The same is true in Penumbra where the infection-with-voice,
Clarence, sometimes take control over the protagonist in cut-scene-like
sequences.
Situations instead of events
As
stated above, the problem with fragmented storytelling is that it is
just covers things that HAVE happening and not what IS happening. This
does not mean that one has to resort to the plot-based design though
and instead of forcing on certain events, one can create situations
instead. Creating a situations is large part of our story telling
design since Penumbra and way of thinking we have found very effective.
It might seem a really fine line between an event and a situation, but
I think it is a really important one and will explain why.
In an
event (as in a plot-event) one wants something very specific to happen,
often including a protagonist action. For example, if a monster enters
a room the protagonist hides in a closet. In a situation, one creates a
some sort of outside pressure and then it is up to the player on how
the protagonist should act, never stopping the normal mode of gameplay.
The line between the two can get pretty vague, since a situation can be
about getting the player to hide in a closet when monster enters a
room, although in a situation this is never forced. A situation is not
just a cut-scene + the interaction though and it is more about exposing
the player to something and letting them deal with it. Also, situations
are more complex to setup as one does not want to lock down the player
and let the normal gameplay remain intact.
If there is a certain
section of the game where the player should be exposed to a new enemy,
but never come too close, this will be done differently using events or
situations. In an event, it can be that the player notices something in
the shadows and then a cut-scene shows how the player hides. Using
situation design, this creature can be roaming certain parts of the
map, making sounds and always staying a certain distance. This means
that the player may sometimes spot the creature but never face it
directly, achieving the same goal. The map can also be set up in such a
way, that when spotting the creature, there is always a room nearby
where the player can hide, trying to indirectly "force" the player into
behaving in a certain manner.
By using situations instead of
events, control does not need to be taken away and it is possible to
add story elements that happen in the present (and not just in the
past). When designing Amnesia, adding interesting situation that
connect with the story has been a large design goal. Usually entire
maps have been used as the place for the situations and designed around
it. We have only started scraping the surface of what is possible
though. By focusing on situations instead of plot-events we have come
up with many things that have a lot more freedom than events we did in
Penumbra, but still communicate the same feelings and story content. We
will continue to use this kind of design in the future as it has been
extremely helpful so far and we feel that there is a lot more to
explore.
Using situations is a bit of a gamble though and one
can never be sure that all players will get the intended experience.
That is just something one has to live with though. When it comes to
interactivity, risk are always involved as it is impossible to plan for
every possible outcome. One should of course make sure that the player
cannot get stuck, but I think it is well worth sacrificing some
security for greater interactivity and possibility of a deeper
experience.
End Notes
The
more game designers start going away from creating stories that emulate
books and movies, the more the medium can evolve. It is only by
focusing on the strengths of the medium that we can make make stories
only games can tell!
*It
is probably worth mentioning that Heavy Rain is making some kind of
progress in the plot-based design. However this is done at the expense
of player interactivity.
I don't think that Mr. Grip is saying these types of games are bad - whether bad games, bad stories, or whatever - but rather that games as medium can form their own type of storytelling and how this might take place.
It's like writing for comics. Due to the particular nature of comics, it's not exactly the same as writing pure prose. Games using the above fragmented system require not just writing plot but writing the extraneous details that normally are skipped over in prose to help create a sense of place and being. However, the extra clutter of this information is at risk of obscuring the primary story. Indeed, it may be that games need to not focus on a single narrative but create multiple narratives running in parallel on different levels similar to TV series with A-plots and B-plots and then overarching series plots.
I find many games like God Of War, Final Fantasy 7 fun to play and I like their stories. I do not want that these kinds of games should stopped being produced. But all story elements (unless they have to do with combat) in these games come in the cut-scenes format. There needs to be way of telling a story while keeping the game interactive all the way through. If we just keep up the way games are done now, the stories they tell will be inferior to the ones found in books and films.
I do not think think that "extra clutter" is a problem. While many books/movies are quite straight-forward others dwell quite deep into the details of the surroundings, character background, etc. I never find that this obscures the main story, rather that it enhance it. And like you say, almost all TV-series with an overarching plot use this type of narrative design.
Interesting article, but for the love of god Gamasutra has to start using spell check before putting these up if we're ever to be taken seriously as an industry.
Otherwise, like I said, a few very interesting points. Actually made me want to try your game, so good job! Downloading the demo right now..., might comment more on it later.
I wrote a piece a while back that you might find interesting as well, it talks about telling stories with game mechanics http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FranciscoSouki/20090625/2130/Game_Mechanics_That_ Tell_Stories.php
It's like writing for comics. Due to the particular nature of comics, it's not exactly the same as writing pure prose. Games using the above fragmented system require not just writing plot but writing the extraneous details that normally are skipped over in prose to help create a sense of place and being. However, the extra clutter of this information is at risk of obscuring the primary story. Indeed, it may be that games need to not focus on a single narrative but create multiple narratives running in parallel on different levels similar to TV series with A-plots and B-plots and then overarching series plots.
I do not think think that "extra clutter" is a problem. While many books/movies are quite straight-forward others dwell quite deep into the details of the surroundings, character background, etc. I never find that this obscures the main story, rather that it enhance it. And like you say, almost all TV-series with an overarching plot use this type of narrative design.
Otherwise, like I said, a few very interesting points. Actually made me want to try your game, so good job! Downloading the demo right now..., might comment more on it later.
I wrote a piece a while back that you might find interesting as well, it talks about telling stories with game mechanics http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FranciscoSouki/20090625/2130/Game_Mechanics_That_
Tell_Stories.php
Cheers.