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Implicit story telling in video games.
I’m seeing two very different opinions appearing as to how we should be experiencing the stories in video games. On the one hand we have those who believe that a heavy handed detailed intricate story is always welcome (such as the one in a game like as chrono trigger.) On the other hand we have this growing movement that believes that the story a player experiences in video games should be one entirely of the players own creation. For instance, games like eve online are all about the story lines that the players forge themselves. Network shattering wars have been fought time and time again on eves single atlas like server, all of which were started by the players, fought by the players and ended by the players. In the middle we have games like mass effect, where every choice you make has been at one point created by Bioware but still feels like it’s your own.
Honestly though while both kinds and everything in between them can certainly earn our appreciation and tell an effective tale, the best story bits I feel are the ones that feel hidden but are clearly intentional on closer inspection, the ones that are so subtle you can imagine that most people must’ve missed them or understated them, subtle in a way that’s unique to a video game and you feel ecstatic about discovering. Blizzard in the past has done implicit story telling remarkably well, here’s my favourite example.
Warcraft three reign of chaos: My favourite moment in wc3 was not the fall of Arthas or the defeat of Archimonde, rather it came during the gate of the three moons mission, Sylvanes broke the only available bridge across the lake with flashy purple meteorites, so I and my undead legion were stranded in the boonies of quelthalas. Our fortunes changed however when we discovered that a local den of totally on the level goblins were willing to provide us with the zeppelins we needed to slaughter the elves ,they even gave us two for free! Hmm, wait a minute, isn’t this their home? Aeren’t they supposed to be cool with the elves considering the fact that they live right next to them? Also could they not clearly see that the deathly pale guy on a skeleton horse offering them blood stained coinage(harvested from a haunted mine) was clearly a bad dude?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hZWHU.png) (A face only a lich king could love)
I mean this was their home! Their grubby green roots seemed planted pretty dam deep (they must’ve been here since the second war at least) and their straw woven hovels certainly didn’t look brand new, so why were they backstabbing the elves when there was literally no way for me to cross the river without their help?
As I was contemplating how creatures brilliant enough to mass produce non defunct hindenburgs where stupid enough to aid the self proclaimed army of the dammed, sylvannes began attacking my base… Da fuck? How’d she cross the river? I imagine her making yet another quip about how I’d clearly never fought elves before just before froustmourne lopped off her head for the umpteenth time (altars op).
My base was already somehow running out of gold and apparently I wasn’t safe at all safe from vexing elf woman and hordes of jiant thunder birds, so clearly there wasn’t much time to contemplate the motives of greedy green gnomes.
10 saves 8 reloads and 16 doom drops later I was an inch away from winning the mission and consequently finding my answer. I had finally arrived at sylvannes base having smashed and claimed all the others. She put up a decent defence but 2 dozen necromancers and a litter of meatwagons, brimming with fresh corpses, don’t make for a fair fight, Sylvanes’s goku count rose to umpteen and one as I promptly commanded 58 skeletons to focus down the altar. With her base all but levelled I made my way to the final key, but not before encountering A SECOND FUCKING GOBLIN SHOP and cloud of elf blue zeppelins in the far west corner of sylvaneses base. Everything clicked. Sylvannes had been using the zeppelins just like us… How many zeppelins had I bought? At least twelve! And I counted six in sylvaneses possession. The bastards were playing both sides. They saw the coming war as a way to make an easy buck off the demise of their allies, merchants of death indeed. Quelthalas didn’t fall to the scourge; it fell to the greed of some fat,cunning, brilliant, Fat trade prince.
Of course None of this is ever said, but that’s what makes it so great and it’s hard to entirely deny what’s clearly being implied here. Making a profit of both factions at the potential cost of dooming your long time neighbors? Fits the goblins mo to a T. You could play that mission a dozen times and still miss out on what’s really going on right beneath your nose. That’s good story telling.
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I should of put a better name T_T
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Nice post. I agree with you, but I also think it should lean more towards the side of explicitly told than open ended. I really dislike games that have multiple, extremely different endings. Those kind of games change the characters too drastically and the game has a story usually ends up more shallow than those that just stick with one storyline. Also, there's this innate desire to know how it all ends definitively and multiple endings leave that desire completely unsatisfied.
I don't count EVE and MMO's in the same category because I don't play MMO's for the story-telling, but instead for social interaction/competition.
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On April 06 2012 05:07 ketomai wrote:
Nice post. I agree with you, but I also think it should lean more towards the side of explicitly told than open ended. I really dislike games that have multiple, extremely different endings. Those kind of games change the characters too drastically and the game has a story usually ends up more shallow than those that just stick with one storyline. Also, there's this innate desire to know how it all ends definitively and multiple endings leave that desire completely unsatisfied.
I don't count EVE and MMO's in the same category because I don't play MMO's for the story-telling, but instead for social interaction/competition.
Yep I adress that, mass effect is inbetween, eve is a diffrent ball park, but the best stuff is delibrete that dosent look dilebrete(which is actually ironicaly enough what what the mass effect three ending might just be)
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I've never played Warcraft, so I can't comment on the bulk of your post, but there is one thing that you said that I'll comment on.
On April 06 2012 04:16 gumshoe wrote:
the best story bits I feel are the ones that feel hidden but are clearly intentional on closer inspection, the ones that are so subtle you can imagine that most people must’ve missed them or understated them
I'm not sure that I agree with this. Why would you *want* most people to miss or misinterpret parts of the story. That sounds kind of counterproductive in my opinion. I don't think that there is anything wrong with telling a story that isn't just completely linear and boring, and requires the player to sit on it and contemplate it to get the full effect... but at the end of the day, a video game company's goal when it comes to story telling should be to get the full effect across to most people, not hide it from them.
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On April 06 2012 05:12 ClysmiC wrote:I've never played Warcraft, so I can't comment on the bulk of your post, but there is one thing that you said that I'll comment on. Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 04:16 gumshoe wrote:
the best story bits I feel are the ones that feel hidden but are clearly intentional on closer inspection, the ones that are so subtle you can imagine that most people must’ve missed them or understated them I'm not sure that I agree with this. Why would you *want* most people to miss or misinterpret parts of the story. That sounds kind of counterproductive in my opinion. I don't think that there is anything wrong with telling a story that isn't just completely linear and boring, and requires the player to sit on it and contemplate it to get the full effect... but at the end of the day, a video game company's goal when it comes to story telling should be to get the full effect across to most people, not hide it from them.
The point is they didnt need to say"silly goblins are backing both sides" it was better as something that just was there. It depends on the situation but often theres no harm in letting your player put two and two together, hell thats all that braid does.
Were intelligent biengs and we love puzzles, whats wrong with having one thats not needed to complete the story? It just adds a bit of colour to the game, makes it feel more like a real place with chaotic but sensible elments that even your characters not aware of.
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The difference in this story telling philosophy has a lot to do with where the game is developed. Western games tend to be more open or less story intricate, while eastern games like to have epics spun into their games.
I could be completely wrong, but is there a western game with a story as driven as the eastern ones? Personally, I think this distinction between styles is fine, because I don't really care much about Niko discovering Michelle's treachery compared to Palom and Parom petrifying themselves, sacrificing the rest of their young lives to get Cecil out of a trap that he walked into.
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On April 06 2012 05:47 seRapH wrote:
The difference in this story telling philosophy has a lot to do with where the game is developed. Western games tend to be more open or less story intricate, while eastern games like to have epics spun into their games.
I could be completely wrong, but is there a western game with a story as driven as the eastern ones? Personally, I think this distinction between styles is fine, because I don't really care much about Niko discovering Michelle's treachery compared to Palom and Parom petrifying themselves, sacrificing the rest of their young lives to get Cecil out of a trap that he walked into.
There is actualy an interesting extra credits(penny arcade tv) on how jrpgs once thrived because of thier intricate story but are now stagnating.
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in the case of eve yes, but I'm talking about the relvant and justified appilcation of the imagination to typical seemingly common place scenarios. When blizzard put a zeppelin store in your base, and then gave one to your enemy, theres an implication there that was clearly intended by the developers.
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On April 06 2012 04:57 gumshoe wrote:
I should of put a better name T_T
No...you should HAVE put a better name.
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EPT
