Tag Archive for 'Gameplay and story'

‘Diablo 3′ Designer Responds to Criticism

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on August 6, 2008
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Lead Diablo 3 designer Jay Wilson addressed the concerns of some fans that the art style of Blizzard’s newest game deviates from its forebears, but refused to give into their demands.

“We’re very happy with how the art style is,” said Wilson in an interview with MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John. “The art team’s happy. The company’s happy. We really like this art style, and we’re not changing it.”

Outspoken critics struck immediately after the Diablo 3 screenshots and trailer were revealed last month, complaining that the brighter colors made the game cartoony and violated the dark spirit of the franchise. Protests have not died down since and led to an online petition with over 54,000 signatures.

Some critics used Photoshop to edit Diablo 3 art into what they thought it should look like.

Fan-edited screenshot of “Diablo 3.″

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REVIEW: ‘GTA4′ Initial Impressions

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on May 11, 2008
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I picked up Grand Theft Auto 4 last week and was immediately struck by how fantastic its storytelling is.

To tell it’s gangster-themed plot of Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic’s arrival in Liberty City, GTA4 uses excellent cut scenes with great characters and writing. Niko and friends often continue the conversations while driving to mission objectives, adding more to the story and cutting down on boring grind time.

Gameplay contributes to the narrative development in GTA4, adding to the player’s immersion in Niko’s world by keeping him there. Trains, taxis and helpful paths to show you where to go on the radar make getting around the massive Liberty City easy, without the need to frequently pause the game and check the map or have a convoluted interface.

Niko’s cell phone is cleverly used to manage plots, chose which missions to do, ask Niko’s friends to hang out or help out, and to talk to characters while on a mission. It also plays other roles in the game, such as sending and receiving pictures. It’s a very good device for managing a complicated game without breaking the immersion with convoluted and show-stopping menus.

The plot for GTA4 is fairly linear, and the missions are as well. Some missions are unique, but most have Niko either hunting down a target in a scripted chase scene or fighting through a building full of enemies, and there’s really only one way to do either of those.

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BioWare Founders See Narrative As More Than Just Story

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on April 26, 2008
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Another interesting interview with BioWare folk sprang up this week, this time with the two doctors who founded the well-known studio, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

Muzyka and Zeschuk see multiple narratives within every game. “The story, VO, and the character interactions for us is an important one, but it’s not the only one,” said Muzyka in the interview.

“There’s also you as explorer, exploring new areas with that sense of awe and excitement,” he continued. “Or you and combat as you as a combatant and progressing your abilities. Or developing your skills assuming your personal identity, growing your character, or interacting with other players in your online guild or community.”

Both Muzyka and Zeschuk are incredibly smart industry veterans with opinions worth listening to. In this interview, they comment on dealing with Fox, their upcoming MMO, Nintendo, film and, most interestingly, narrative and storytelling.

“It’s not narrative in the game that’s the thing,” said Muzyka, discussing games as a medium for art. “I think it’s the emotion, that whatever play experience you’re having, whether social interaction or gameplay interaction, or in the game having combat, it’s the emotion you’re feeling that makes you feel connected to it.

“That’s why art resonates,” he continued, “as you start feeling something for the characters or the experience.”

Saber CEO Matthew Karch Adds to Debate On Story In Game Design

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on April 16, 2008
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Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, just done with last year’s time-bending shooter “TimeShift,” had some interesting comments about the role of story in game design in an interview with 1UP.

The conversation began at the “Future of Story in Game Design” panel at the Game Developer’s Conference in February. At that panel, Karch argued against Silicon Knights’ Denis Dyack, saying that story should serve the gameplay and was relatively trivial.

Dyack expanded on his original arguments in a recent interview with 1UP’s Philip Kollar, and Karch asked to do the same. “My attitude about story is that it’s important, but how important depends upon what the player is doing,” said Karch in this latest interview.

Karch clarified that the importance of story depends on the game’s genre. In first-person shooters, “story is important to give the player motivation and to immerse him in the game world, but I don’t think it’s the most important aspect of the game. If you have a great story but the shooting feels lousy, the animation is bad, and the AI is average, no one is really going to care.”

“Fallout 3″ is an example of a shooter where story will be essential, said Karch, while “Gears of War” and “Call of Duty 4″ are less dependent. “Look at ‘Call of Duty 4,’” he added. “It’s a great game, but do you really care about the story? I didn’t. No one else did, but it didn’t matter.”

Unlike Karch, I was into the stories of “Call of Duty 4″ and “Gears of War,” and was disappointed that the “Gears” story was so cursory and incomplete. I think that, if a game wants the player to invest himself in its world, story is always important. If the narrative is ridiculous or nonexistent, then it’s much more difficult to become immersed, no matter how good the mechanics are.

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Storytelling in Collectible Card Games at Man Bytes Blog

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on April 3, 2008
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Storytelling blogger Corvus at Man Bytes Blog is devoting his time this week to looking at the potential for story in collectible card games. They’re not the medium you’d usually turn to for a good yarn, but, as Corvus points out, a dedicated player can construct a narrative from a good game of Magic: The Gathering.

Corvus’ post yesterday raised the issue. “While CCGs ought to be an ideal storytelling medium, utilizing strictly gameplay mechanics to convey story, they aren’t presented or structured in such a way as to generally encourage this type of use,” he concludes.

“Perhaps it’s the need to invest a large amount of personal resources, both financially in acquiring cards and mentally in memorizing card-specific rules, that overrides their ability to transport the players to another storyworld without the added benefit of animated series and digital versions that take place within a virtual landscape,” Corvus added.

Magic, says Corvus, offered a traditionally hardcore game of rules and stats for a niche of gamers put off by a trend in roleplaying games towards character development and story. “Magic contained all the flavor of AD&D and none of the pesky plotline nonsense that was suddenly infecting the RPG world,” he adds.

Corvus’ second post looks at why card games like Magic don’t work as storytelling mediums. And his conclusion?

While any set of game mechanics can be treated as a narrative, there’s a tipping point at which the mechanics are so vast that the audience receives very limited returns for their application of narrative consistency. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Clearly, Magic has proven itself to be a phenomenon with strong cultural appeal and it has outlasted many of the pretenders to its throne. I cannot even fathom the Herculean task of maintaining game balance within such a vast system for 15 years.

Corvus offers an interesting perspective on an interactive medium that does not work for telling a story. I’ve never been into collectible card games, for the same reasons as Corvus. It seems that were they to become simpler and with more room for creativity outside of the rules, in the manner of roleplaying games like D&D, card games offer narratives just as valid.

INTERVIEW: ‘Age of Decadence’ Developer Says Choice Defines RPGs

Published
on March 31, 2008
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Iron Tower Studio’s lead developer Vince D. Weller was kind enough to answer some questions about his upcoming tradition-minded RPG “Age of Decadence” in an email interview.

He talks about his own game, the importance of choice and story, and how his studio’s approach to storytelling contrasts with that of big name developers like Bethesda and Oblivion.

Down the Wall: First, could you introduce yourself and your team?

Vince: 5-people team: designer, programmer, artist, modeler, animator. My name is Vince, I’m the designer.

DtW: “Age of Decadence” has a very interesting setting. How did you decide on that?

Vince: We wanted to make something different. High and generic “medieval” fantasy has been done to death and then some. We also wanted to go with a “fall of an empire” scenario for storytelling reasons and the Roman Empire is an obvious choice there, both as an inspiration and as a reference. The rest was influenced by some Michael Moorcock’s works (city of Quarzhasaat) and Lovecraft’s stories.

DtW: What games exemplify the non-linear story that you are going for with “Age of Decadence”? What’s your inspiration?

Vince: Prelude to Darkness, a great indie RPG that nobody’s heard of, and Arcanum, a Troika RPG masterpiece.

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‘50 Cent’ Sequel Has a Terrible Story

Published
on March 28, 2008
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Upcoming rap action game “50 Cent: Blood on the Sand,” sequel to 2005’s massive flop “Bulletproof,” features a story that can be worst described as good. Producer Aaron Blean summarized the story in an interview with IGN Australia:

50 and G-Unit are putting on a sold-out performance somewhere in a fictional Middle Eastern setting. This is where the ‘blood on the sand’ comes in. They put on the performance; the people are pleased, but the concert promoter stiffs them and doesn’t give 50 and G-Unit their payment.

So, of course, 50 isn’t going to leave until he gets paid, so he hassles the concert promoter, [saying] if he doesn’t come up with the money now, there will be consequences. And instead, the promoter offers him a very valuable gift – something that’s valuable to this particular country – a diamond encrusted skull.

So 50 gets the skull, and as he’s about to leave this war-torn country, when they’re ambushed and the skull is taken. They escape the ambush, but they’re without the skull. So 50’s motivated to get what belongs to him. So basically, throughout the game, he’s trying to track these people down and find out who they are and why he was ambushed.

Ignoring the fact that the entire story is about Fiddy and G Unit trying to get paid, it’s also totally insane. But it raises an interesting question. Would a corny, Indiana-Jones-with-gangsters story like this one be worth suffering through if the gameplay was good? What’s more important: gameplay and presentation or narrative?

GDC: Panels Discuss Story in Game Design

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on February 22, 2008
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Two panels discussed the importance and state of storytelling in video games at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The first covered the place of story in the developing medium of games, and the second looked at examples of good storytelling in games.

The Future of Story in Game Design

A panel Thursday discussed the future of story in video game development, reported Gamasutra. Deborah Todd led the panel, which included Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and Saber 3D’s Matthew Karch, as well as Tim Willits from iD Software and Matt Costello from Polar Productions.

“I think story should serve the gameplay, and not the other way,” said Karch. “In the shooter genre, which I’m in, I don’t think anyone really cares about the story. I don’t think in some genres it’s especially important.” Karch’s team recently released “Timeshift.”

“In 5 to 10 years I don’t think there’s going to be a shooter genre. It’s going to be more literary,” argued Dyack. “A shooter would just be ‘action’.”

Dyack said story will become the dominant element in game design. “Games are the eighth art form: the glue is interactivity, and that aspect is something that makes our industry unique and there’s a huge misconception at this industry is that gameplay is everything. These people are going to be mistaken,” he said. “And as this industry matures content and story, as it did in the 30s and 40s with cinema, will become dominant.”

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REVIEW: ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Has Immersive World, Bad Story

Published
on February 21, 2008
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“Assassin’s Creed” is more than meets the eye. Behind the roof-jumping, sword-swinging medieval gameplay is a bizarrely science fiction explanation. The modern day setting — where bartending assassin Desmond Miles is kidnapped by a mysterious corporation bent on tapping his genetic memories of medieval assassin Altair (got that?) — not only explains the Holy Land gameplay but also more conventional aspects of the game, aspects normally taken for granted.

[Spoiler Warning: This review covers many aspects of the game's plot, but does not reveal the ending or anything really significant.]

For example, when you die in “Assassin’s Creed,” you revert back to a checkpoint. Sounds normal, but it’s not. Rather than dying, the game says that Miles becomes desynchronized with his genetic memory of Altair. What appears to be a health bar is explained as a synchronization count, and going back to a checkpoint is explained as going back to a previous memory to ensure proper synchronization.

All this seems semantic, but it has the effect of turning player death, which should be a jarring aspect of a storyline, into a fully rational occurrence. (Imagine it in a book: All the main characters just died because you read the chapter wrong, and now you have to read it all over again.)

“Assassin’s Creed” draws from the storytelling technique of its predecessor, “Prince of Persia.” Both games were developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and “Assassin’s Creed” takes the platforming model of “Prince of Persia” and plunks it in an open world with a very much expanded fighting mechanic. When you die in “Prince of Persia,” the Prince tells the story speaks up and says, “That’s not how it happened.” If the Prince plummets to his death during the game, it’s a failure on the player’s part to stick to his plot, just as dying in “Assassin’s Creed” is a failure to adhere to the memories of Miles/Altair.

This “memory” theme of “Assassin’s Creed” lends itself to other aspects of gameplay. Selecting from old assassination missions to replay, while essentially just a level selector, is disguised as a menu of genetic memories. Teleporting from one town to another instantly is fast-forwarding through the memory of Altair’s travels.

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BioShock’s Storytelling

Published
on August 16, 2007
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BioShock’s release approacheth. The reviews are in, and it’s earned nothing but unremitting praise. The Xbox 360 version’s aggregate review on GameRankings.com is a stunning 99%.

One of the most interesting critiques comes from the closing comments in Charles Onyett’s review on IGN:

There is art here, despite what many would say isn’t possible with games, from Roger Ebert to game designers like Hideo Kojima. But it’s in BioShock–it’s in the gorgeously realized, watery halls of Rapture. It’s in a Little Sister’s expression of thanks when you choose to save her, or the utter silence if you harvest instead. It’s in the way the characters develop, in the testimonials of the recording boxes you pick up along the way. It’s in the way the narrative is structured, and the way it blends so seamlessly with the action.

Irrational had a clear vision with this game, something pulled off with remarkable precision in every department. They didn’t just deliver something that’s fun to play, a criterion so often cited as the benchmark of what makes a game worthwhile. BioShock stands as a monolithic example of the convergence of entertaining gameplay and an irresistibly sinister, engrossing storyline that encompasses a host of multifaceted characters. This is an essential gaming experience.

Graphically, BioShock looks absolutely amazing. That should be apparent to anyone who has played the demo (available now on Xbox Live and for PC gamers by August 21).

Of course, graphics aren’t everything, but they do facilitate improved storytelling. They allow a greater range of expression on the characters, such as the Little Sisters mentioned in Onyett’s review, and a greater sense of immersion for the gamer as the world becomes more detailed and realistic.

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