Tag Archive for 'Narrative'

BioWare Founders See Narrative As More Than Just Story

Published
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.”

Storytelling in Collectible Card Games at Man Bytes Blog

Published
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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Adding Stories to Sandbox Games

Published
on February 20, 2008
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“Civilization IV,” “Rome: Total War” and “The Sims” don’t usually make the Best Video Game Story list. Single player play in these expansive sandboxes generally boils down to a massive skirmish against computer bots, and the game ends not when you slay the last boss but when you check off the last objective.

Gamasutra has an interesting feature by Neil Sorens on turning the stale check lists and computer bots of sandbox games into user-developed storylines and characters.

“When a player creates a family in ‘The Sims,’ the resulting game — based on input from the player — tells the life stories of the members of that family,” writes Sorens. “Designers can and should do more to exploit these player-generated stories.”

The problem as Sorens sees it is that players cannot see the stories they naturally create in these massive worlds. Say you declare war on the Russians in a “Civilization IV” campaign. You might do so because the Russians are there and you have a big army in need of employment. Under Sorens suggestion, the game justify this campaign for some story reason (Russians killed your dog, you hate Commies, they abused people of your national religion, etc. etc.).

Sorrens advocates that story-driving exposition replace the bar graphs, charts, and reports that generally represent player statistics, achievements and attributes in big sandbox games.

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Downloadable Content for BioShock

Published
on October 19, 2007
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Ken Levine commented this week on downloadable content for BioShock. As the writer points out, BioShock with it’s very closed narrative is not the first game you’d associate with DLC.

For comparison, Half-Life 2’s episodic DLC works well with that game, extending the story after the cliffhanger ending. BioShock’s conclusion (at least the happy one I saw) tied up all the loose ends and left no room for post-plot antics. Another level just would not fit.

Bethesda has provided DLC for Oblivion since launch, with the final pack coming out next week. As an open-ended world, Oblivion readily facilitates the addition of new content, be it an expansion of the story, a new quest, a new weapon, or a new player house. The story in that game can be tackled at the player’s leisure, so it’s easy to add in a new level.

On the other hand, the Rapture of BioShock is such a tight experience that forces the player to move along a set path but in his own way. You can chose what skills to employ in combat and of course whether to save or harvest the little sisters, but you still run through the same number of levels and end up at the same boss. It’s an excellent way of telling a story, but leaves little leeway for a new level or expansion.

“Diablo II, to me, was a great model for an expansion, because it enhanced the original game, but also extended the game, too,” said Levine in an interview with Games for Windows magazine. “I’m not a really big fan of expanding things just by linearly adding to the experience, adding a new campaign, as much as I am of enhancing the original experience and adding replayability to that experience.”

“I think that certainly BioShock’s combat experience is great, but it could be broader. I’m a little more confused as far as how to expand the narrative experience,” he added.

The game is not fully linear, but there’s a definite starting and ending point, and the pacing is perfect. It could only be disrupted by attachments to the narrative. New plasmids though, that’s another story entirely. If they are implemented completely and don’t feel tacked on or useless, such DLC would be a welcome addition.

Lost Odyssey to Have 20 Hours of Cutscenes

Published
on October 3, 2007
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At a pre-Tokyo Game Show conference, Mistwalker’s Hironobu Sakaguchi revealed new information about the developer’s upcoming Xbox 360 JRPG Lost Odyssey.

One of the most surprising details Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, mentioned pertains to game length. He estimated that Lost Odyssey will take 40 hours to beat and includes 20 hours of event scenes. Essentially, it’s Xenosaga on steroids.

The game has a deep backstory, with the cursed main character having lived for no less than 1,000 years, and many event scenes explore his accrued memories. Interestingly, much of the backstory is explored via passages written by Japanese author Kiyoshi Shigematsu.

According to Sakaguchi, there are 34 written passages, and each takes between 5 and 10 minutes to read. That means as much as 6 of the game’s 20 hours of event scenes are reading.

I understand that a good story needs depth, and many a good game employ writing to explore it, including the recent Oblivion with its library of history books. But Sakaguchi may be going to far with this, entirely divorcing gameplay from what may be necessary developments in the story. It will be interesting to see how this game is received.

Lost Odyssey will release in Japan this December.

Story in Open World Games

Published
on October 3, 2007
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Gamasutra has a feature on 20 of the best open world games, an unquestionably popular genre with games like the Elder Scrolls and Grand Theft Auto series in its ranks and one with an important approach to story.

Too often does story have a tacked-on feel in these games. In the Metroid and Castlevania games, you fight and explore your way to the boss, be it an alien or vampire. Most fantasy-themed game pit you against some evil overlord, hellspawned or otherwise, and his army of minions. The most ridiculous example of ridiculous plot comes from Blaster Master, in which your frog escapes and you have to find it. This isn’t the rule with open games, but there are few exceptions.

Open world games truly are one of the best places to exercise storylines. Not only can a good story serve as a loose guide through an otherwise daunting world (such as in the Baldur’s Gate series), but a good non-linear story gives background and depth to an otherwise large, liberated and tragically one-dimensional world.

Finding such a title is unfortunately rare, and the games are usually riddled with cliches. Grand Theft Auto’s tales come straight out of gangster flicks. The Gamasutra article mentions terms like “darkness” and “corruption,” “lathered liberally” over games like Metroid Prime 2 and 3.

It’s possible that this is inevitable. Open world games today, especially ones with the scope of Oblivion, require large teams and larger sums of cash, and exploring an unconventional world is a risky move. It’s interesting to compare the originality of setting in Morrowind–with its mushroom towns, terraced stone cities, tribal natives, and strange gods–to the more generic Medieval-fantasy one of Oblivion.

REVIEW: ‘Halo 3′ Ending Melds Gameplay and Story

Published
on September 30, 2007
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I spoke about using plot pressure rather than actual pressure to create compelling gameplay in a previous post, and Halo 3 provides a perfect example of such a device.

[Spoiler Warning: Details on the end of Halo 3 follow.]

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‘Halo 3′ Believe Ads Seduce with Story

Published
on September 22, 2007
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While only the latest piece of Microsoft’s intensive marketing campaign for Halo 3, the “Believe” series of advertisements is unique even among advertisements in that it focuses almost entirely on the game’s concluding storyline.

The advertisements center around a painstakingly constructed diorama of a battle featuring detailed models  of marines and aliens, eight to 19 inches in height, duking it out over a devastated city. Two of the short ads, including the latest one, feature veterans reminiscing over the war in the style of “Band of Brothers.” Another is a making of documentary, and the fourth pairs shots of the model with a little Chopin. All of them recognize the role Master Chief played in turning the battle around and giving hope to the beleaguered human marines.

The opportunity to “play the hero” has always attracted me to some games. The player takes up the heroes path, saves the world and has a tangible impact on the game’s setting, which is far more eventful than anything I can ever picture myself getting into. This aspect of games, however, is rarely used to steer a marketing campaign, taking a backseat to ubiquitous sellers like graphics, gameplay and game-related gags.

The Believe series of advertisements do not highlight new features or gameplay, or even show any of Halo 3’s next-gen visuals. They emphasize the epic nature of Halo 3’s story, and the absolutely pivotal role the protagonist plays in saving humanity, a role that the player must take up and see to the end.

While naturally done in the interest of profits, turning Halo 3’s release into the entertainment event of the year, the Believe ads show an increasing emphasis on story, now becoming a selling point for the game rather than an excuse for an interstellar shoot-em-up.

The Odd Couple: Gameplay and Story Working Together

Published
on September 7, 2007
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At this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference, Matt Costello of Polar Productions addressed the need for story and gameplay to work in concert, Gamasutra reports. Costello used his experience writing for Doom 3 and the upcoming games Rage and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 to show how the plot can shape the game.

“Add the parameters from the beginning of the session — something at stake, something dangerous,” said Costello. “It changes the tenor. It can be a dangerous and exciting puzzle. Think of an interaction that fits that world, and then think of storytelling parameters from story and books and movies.”

Pressure from the plot is an influential aspect of almost any game, whether you’re pushed into rushing forward to save the princess or stop the villain. Even in simple shooting games, shooting alien invaders becomes that much more pressing when mankind’s survival is at stake.

The plot in these situations adds something to the gameplay, making it a necessary and pointed goal rather than an arbitrary task to be methodically completed. Far too often are they developed separately and one becomes an excuse for the other.

Interestingly, Costello said that player interaction in games is only an illusion: “If you think you’ve impacted things, you’ve impacted things. The illusion of interactivity is what you want to deliver.”