 |
|
|
| |
Opinion: Space Marines Need Dialogue Trees Too
by Tom Cross
|
|
| |
|
January 19, 2009
|
| |
[In this in-depth Gamasutra opinion piece, writer Tom Cross examines Monolith's cult shooter No One Lives Forever and other games from CoD4 to Assassin's Creed, analyzing what makes their dialogue systems different from your average branching dialogue tree.]
Telling good stories in today’s games is a contentious issue. Different genres tend to approach storytelling from different points, some use CGI cutscenes and little else, some use in-engine cutscenes and even in-game cinematic moments (a la Half-Life 2), or just plain text dialogue.
Regardless of the method of delivery, the choice to be made when writing the scripts for such games is that of a single storyline or multiple story threads. A game like Final Fantasy VII has one script, on storyline, which never deviates from its set path.
Other games contain key plot nodes that never change, but allow for multiple paths to each node. Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed and the Grand Theft Auto series are all practitioners of this method.
Ambitious games feature multiple nodes and multiple paths, and these games require the most effort when it comes to hidden or optional content: games like Fallout 3, Deus Ex, and Mass Effect allow players to reach the same conclusion through two separate paths or different conclusions using the similar methods.
This necessarily causes a lot of trouble for game developers. Do they really want to write enough dialogue for 10 games, only to have one playthrough (which is too much for many players) encompass a fraction of their work?
This is normally a problem faced by RPG and adventure game developers: they’re expected to produce convincing, branching story paths, and the trendsetters in these areas (Bethesda and BioWare are responsible for the mainstream examples of such games) are constantly upping the ante.
It’s fascinating, then, to find games that have nothing to do with RPGs, have extremely linear storylines, and yet still utilize certain branching story or script paths. Mostly I’m thinking about The Operative: No One Lives Forever, a game that was a stealth/action shooter through and through, yet featured long, interactive branching conversations within its cutscenes.
 Cut The Chatter Now
NOLF was condemned for just this quality: people didn’t like the fact that they had to wade through long, input-heavy cutscenes in between missions.
It seemed to them that they’d signed up for a sneaky, exciting spy shooter, and been saddled with a game that took its bureaucratic infighting and snappily written confrontations as seriously as it did its gunplay.
At the risk of beating an already beaten horse, this is the same problem faced (to a degree) by Prince of Persia 2008. This game also made the interesting choice to include story and dialogue segments that were entirely optional, yet also rather lengthy.
At any point in the game, one could initiate a dialogue between the two main characters. While it isn’t exactly the same method as that practiced in NOLF, it practices the same kind of tactics as does Monolith’s spy shooter. They both encourage the player to start up or continue conversations.
It’s apparent that some people don’t appreciate these kinds of antics in their non-RPG, non-puzzle games. It’s seen as a departure from form, obviously, but also as not in keeping with the tone of less “cerebral” games. More important than any such discontent is this question: how does this kind of inflection change these games, and does it change them for the better?
Part of the fun of NOLF’s story was always the ability to explore every possible conversation option within a given cutscene. Sure, not all cutscenes possessed such options, but the ones that did added a level of depth and involvement that games without such features lack.
It sounds tacky, but there’s something to be said for even the most minor, superficial choice within such a scene. It not only gives the player a sense of agency and involvement, it allows them to explore the story as much or as little as they want.
This isn’t exactly a ground-shaking conclusion. Games have been doing this with great success for many years. Bioware’s Mass Effect was a game best played for its conversations, so beautifully and entertainingly were they rendered.
Obviously NOLF and PoP don’t approach this same level of interaction: these are dialogues that happen with very limited options, in the case of NOLF, and with no options at all in the case of PoP.
Still, their contributions are noticeable and should be recognized. It’s perhaps true that such games don’t normally have this kind of accompaniment that makes even these minor contributions so influential. In a genre that features cutscenes as seen in Doom 3, Splinter Cell, and Halo 3, NOLF’s lengthy, branching dialogues are a welcome change.
Of course, this is not to say that storytelling of the kind used by Infinity Ward in CoD 4’s cutscenes is in some way deficient. In fact, that game is one of the purest examples of almost entirely first person, non-directed cutscenes.
Still, what it lacks is that sense of agency, but more importantly, the sense that there’s more to the game than just what it’s willing to make you watch.
 Delicious Decisions
In most games, you watch the story and narrative that developers desire you to watch. It’s intriguing to encounter completely non-mandatory, optional dialogue. It’s often of a more personal, character-driven nature, this dialogue: it adds little things into your body of knowledge concerning the fiction. It means that you can contextualize the characters and settings within the game as much as you want to.
Of course, one could argue that this kind of back-story and minor exposition can be provided by a regular cutscene: there’s no reason, you might say to make such content an unknown, something that must be discovered.
However, it’s this unknowable quantity, this idea that such content does not, for the player, exist unless purposefully unearthed, that makes this kind of option special.
This tactic is one that game developers love to discuss. It’s this idea that allows them to make the claim that no two players will have the same experience, or at least that there are many different experiences to be had within one or more playthroughs. Doesn’t this sound like the kind of experience all games could use, not just RPGs and puzzle games?
This trick, the illusion of a new, increased level of confidence between you and the game, is something I cherish when playing. I know that everyone else (mostly) will listen to all of those little conversations between the Prince and Elika, just as I know that everyone else will explore all of Cate’s hilarious, venomous barbs directed at her superiors.
Still, the fact that I have to dig deeper into the game’s structure is something that gives me not only a sense of accomplishment, but also a sense of intimacy.
It’s an intimacy not only with the characters, but also with the fiction as a world. It’s as if I was given an extra page to a favorite book, and told that that page would reveal non-crucial bits and pieces of the story. How could I not look?
 A Little Bit of Talking With Your Shooting?
I think that people are starting to embrace this kind of approach, this broadening of conversational possibilities throughout genres. Obsidian, the people behind the upcoming spy action RPG Alpha Protocol, have the right idea. Sure, it’s still an RPG, but like the best action RPGs, it uses its conversation trees to bridge the gap between shooter and other.
Likewise, if Ubisoft’ tactics in the recent Assassin’s Creed (a game whose lengthy optional conversations were obviously developed using some of the same philosophies on display in Prince of Persia) represent a new unifying direction for their products, then we can expect to see more such conversational options in the future.
I see this as a good thing. People may say that these are just dislocated bits of story, meaningless due to their less than seamless integration with the rest of the narrative, but I’d like to remind them of an important fact.
These are video games we’re playing, and if we can’t find a way to break away (even in the smallest way) from the steady, linear narratives of other fictional mediums, then we’re doing something wrong.
I’m a huge supporter of wonderful stories and strong narratives, even at the expense of other elements of video games. Even so, it’s obvious that there are stories of amazing depth, dramatic ingenuity, and potential that we can uncover using these methods.
Here’s to shooters with lengthy, annoying conversations, and adventure games with pointless chatter. I’ll take what I can get.
[Tom Cross also writes for Gamers' Temple and blogs about video games at shouldntbegaming.wordpress.com. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.]
|
| |
|
|
No One Lives Forever and Mass Effect have agency in the dialog, Assassin's Creed has cut scenes that are visually interesting. Prince of Persia has neither of these things and as such, end up deterring the player. I too want more chatty games, but they must either allow me to retain interactivity and be interesting enough that I don't mind.
"I don't know anyone that likes to comb through branching structures"
I do. I'm an explorer; I enjoy playing "what-if" in games. I play through every available dialogue option in Mass Effect (and NOLF) for the same reason that I climb every rooftop in Thief: I want to experience the overall theme of the game. By going to every location, talking to every character, using every ability, opening everything that's closed, and trying every dialogue option, I get a richer play experience.
This is why I favor games like System Shock, Deus Ex and Fallout 3, why games-on-rails like COD4 and Half-Life are a little boring for me despite their high production values, and why games that appear to create a large and detailed world but then deny me the ability to explore that world -- I'm looking at you, Assassin's Creed and Dead Space -- are (for one reason among others) incredibly frustrating.
The best games for my money are the ones that hit on all barrels: story, artwork, music, sound effects, dialogue, mechanics, and multiple-solution puzzles, all integrated to serve a single theme. This is why I'll play a game like Deus Ex many times while a game like Doom3 will be played once and finished only out of a sense of duty. Multiple layers add depth, and depth creates opportunities for exploration.
And that's why, like Tom, I also enjoyed the interactive cutscenes in NOLF, and wouldn't mind seeing that level of player agency become more common in games that strongly feature player agency in the main game (such as shooters).
I wouldn't claim to be representative of most gamers. But I don't think I'm the only person who enjoys exploring all the options that a game world has to offer.
Even a world of space marines. :)
I realize its not necessarily being said that the gameplay should be ignored, but both are very important even if its just to encourage the player to keep going to the next plot point. I can understand that a branching dialogue gives distance between a plot heavy game and a movie, but I'd rather see the branching dialogue as a product of action instead of just selecting certain responses. Hopefully we can get to a place where that would be economically feasible even if that leaves out some gameplay in a playthrough.
Also I initially said this on the opinion piece on Prince of Persia but when I hit the button to talk to Elika I hit the button a total of 8 times so far, the first 4 times were throw-away sentences and the last 4 were literally the exact same phrase each time. At that point my thought was "there is no way I'm gonna waste time with this". Sure its just bad luck that I didn't get anything relevant but it shouldn't of been left up to luck.
Now when it comes to choice there's usually no consequence. I can answer a question "No" and then backtrack to see what the NPC would say if I had said "Yes". I think reducing multiple dialogue branches from specific questions to general inquiries may make conversing more streamlined and efficient, and choices should also be generalized from (yes / no / changed my mind, I meant yes) to actually picking something over another thing... opening one dialogue branch should close the others off. Perhaps they could even be generalized to the point where you choose an emotion and watch what happens when you respond in anger or peace.
It does kind of seem like the Mass Effect system was still imperfect despite a lot of amazing achievements that have been justly praised.
I do I think that a narrative that is both constructed and responds to player input is entirely possible, and that it's exactly the goal of any game that gives telling stories a go.
What seems complicated to execute, to me, is making the act of choosing between your (the developer's) four previously written dialogue options feel like real gameplay. Bioware seems to favor an approach in its games where dialogue options are tied to "good and evil" values and your choices basically increment one or the other toward whichever ending you've made your character karmically deserve. I definitely appreciate what Stephen means when he calls such an approach simple, but some people do seem to have really responded to it, just as I have fond memories of certain dialogue trees in Planescape: Torment, and other people talk about the Fallout boss who could be talked out of his plot to destroy the world if you navigated the conversation just right. I think that dialogue trees can be used to good effect (I hope that's the case since they're in my game!), and for that matter there's a whole interactive fiction scene based around the appeal of dialogue trees. My rule of thumb though is that play out because of your dialogue selections arise from the character relationships, and perhaps secondarily from what the dialogue selections might tell the game about the character... I admit to not personally liking the "if you choose enough of this, you must want the game to end this way thirty hours from now" magical causality method as a general principle. But in all things it comes down to whether the writing can pick up in execution where the mechanics of interactivity leave off.
Adding interaction to storytelling that still feels rewarding is a challenge that hasn't been solved in ways as imaginative as other interactions, at least in recent times. I'd like to make a note here about my continuing fascination about Westwood's Blade Runner idea of a butterfly effect branching storyline, where players weren't aware of where in the tree they stood. They chose to obscure the mechanics of the interaction, resulting in incredibly organic interactive storytelling that preserved replay value and identification with the main character but got rid of most of the "what if..." sense of loss. I honestly don't know why that model hasn't been explored further.
In general, Tom is saying the same thing I have (or very similar) for decades except that I have been stating that the Japanese have been doing complex (as well as simple), deeply involving story- and character-driven games for decades with their adventures, visual novels and simulations. This includes various hybrids of these genres, of course.
My point has always been that there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Japanese games that use this approach (and there are an enormous number of them each year) focus on involving the player/audience through emotional connection rather than physical action. This is what the English market has always lacked (relatively speaking... I'm not saying there's no English games with well-presented stories, just that I've seen vastly more from Japan).
Unfortunately, attempts to offer such games in English have always failed or met with lackluster response. This is very similar to how other media such as manga or anime have been offered and failed prior to the current boom. It's also similar to how specific genres of Japanese storytelling aimed at specific target audiences (kids or girls, for example) were neglected or rejected until relatively recently.
The point is that the market is there and always has been. It's just a matter of companies having the resources and making the choice to offer such experiences to audiences. This includes Japanese companies being willing to promote their excellent franchises to targets beyond the typical English market gaming venues in order to reach the untapped audiences. I'm skipping over the important and complex issues surrounding rights availability of properties, but that must also be addressed by companies in Japan and elsewhere.
The models for non-linear narrative delivery are abound, there are plenty more options other than the perceived binary of "branching" and "linear".
The only people that comb through branching systems are geeks-like-us. Your average consumer, doesn't have the time, or commitment; and it is pompous for us to assume they do or should.