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Storytelling in video games (previously: Video games, media, storytelling, and Planescape: Torment)
Edit: this started at as a note to myself to write some meta about storytelling in general and Planescape: Torment in particular. It turned into an actual meta post. Crap. Old ramble part above the divider, new actual meta below.
Totally pretentious subject line aside, I won't actually be writing that much here. This is more like a note-to-self: Talk about Planescape: Torment A LOT at some point in the near future.
Basically for a while now I have been trying to train myself to think more critically about the media I consume. This happened around the same time but independently of a realization: I am an unrepentant and enthusiastic media maven. I read books and comic books and graphic novels and even plays; I watch TV shows, cartoons, and movies; I play video games; I look at art; I listen to music. I think any creative medium, especially any medium that can tell a story (and if I dig deep enough I discover a belief that every medium can), is valid, and can be compelling, and is no "better" than any other.
I've recently read and been pointed to several posts about the media hierarchy (click the links inside, too). I've also been thinking a lot about storytelling in an interactive medium -- namely, video games. Bizarrely enough a discussion on the same topic started right when I joined The Escapist after someone pointed me to a brilliant review of Psychonauts (another video game I need to write about, which comes with my highest recommendation). Given this syzygy I have given in and admit that I will just have to start talking about the subject.
So. Storytelling in video games. I will have to write posts and posts on the subject, but the point of this post is this: I have been going through, in my mind, all the video games I'm familiar with and trying to think about them critically and I have realized that Planescape: Torment is probably the best game I'm aware of. This isn't an honour I gave it willingly, nor does P:T predispose me to liking it -- it scared the shit out of me and I generally dislike playing PC games. And yet, I have to admit that I ended up really liking it. I came to this realization on my own, and then I emerged from my latest bout of seclusion to read about video games and have discovered that pretty much every time people want to talk about storytelling in video games, about just damn good games, about video games transcending the barrier between art and entertainment -- Planescape: Torment kept coming up. Often mentioned alongside P:T are things like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus for mood and atmosphere, or Psychonauts for originality and creativity (and see this RATHER SPOILERY article for an analysis of Psychonauts as art).
This surprised me, even though it shouldn't have. I'm not even sure why it surprised me. For one, no one else I had talked to had even heard of the game. Of the four games mentioned above, P:T was, in my experience, the most obscure, followed by a tie of ICO-Psychonauts, and with SotC leading in familiarity. I was so used to hearing about things like Halo 3 being hailed as the pillars of video game achievement, I guess, that it surprised me that these completely left-field, strange, uncategorizable games were what people saw as leading the vanguard of the video game revolution.
If nothing else, this gave me renewed hope. I'm not sure for what. It's comforting that there are people out there, vocal, respected people, who will hold up oddball games like this -- and not just because they get so little recognition (out of the liking upopular things is deep school). These people are willing to discuss these games and talk about them as art, as interactive stories.
I guess I was also surprised to discover that I might have good taste. Considering that I mostly swim in a sea of guilty pleasures (Blind Date comes to mind; I have absolutely no shame), it was strange to discover that if I thought hard enough about what I really consider to be good I came up with opinions like these. It's not just comforting to see my opinions shared by people I respect and admire -- it's just good to feel that when it comes right down to it I'm not really that crazy; that other people are willing to think the same way I do about video games; that I'm not alone.
Anyway, what it comes down to is that I really need to go back, replay Planescape: Torment, and write seriously about it. This goes for a lot of other video games, and other media, too. I've been sitting on half-written reviews for about a bajillion things, . These include Psychonauts, uncountable books, Avatar: The Last Airbender (I'm trying really hard to think about its flaws here), and the comic book/graphic novel series Runaways. I recommend pretty much all of them wholeheartedly, but I also want to think more critically about them: their flaws and especially how they play in the space provided by their medium. Runaways, for example, is not a transcendental comic book; it doesn't push the boundaries of its medium -- it's just a really good comic book.
I don't know. But I'm looking forward to being able to talk about these things. Sadly, I won't get to Torment for quite a while -- the game requires an extraordinary investment, in terms of both time and emotion, and I just don't have enough of either to spare right now. But I've been planning on doing reviews for a while now (and I even actually wrote one!) and I guess I want to start by, sometime soon, writing a meta-riffic post on media, especially video games.
Anyway. Like I said, this is more a note-to-self than anything else, but for now I want to do an entirely unscientific and (since I'm a cheapskate free user) non-shiny poll:
Have you played either of the following games? Tell me anything that comes to mind about them.
Then I realize that I will never be done talking and basically that I want to natter on about storytelling in games for real for a little bit.
Much of this sudden deluge of BLAH BLAH BLAH came about from this innocuous-looking post ostensibly concerned with Squall's fabulous buttocks. While I dutifully put in myfive billion comments two cents about Squall there, there was actually a tangential discussion of storytelling and videogames. It started out discussing romance and bildungsromane but then I went on thinking about storytelling in games more generally and now I won't shut up.
Incidentally, I made a tremendously long comment incoherently lauding Planescape: Torment in that thread. Just in case I'm still not pimping the game hard enough.
Now.
After much research and many sessions of deep thought (lawl) on storytelling in video games in particular I've come to some interesting... not conclusions. More like observations.
Let's look at some quick case studies. My subjects are: Planescape: Torment (henceforth P:T or Torment), Final Fantasy VIII, Psychonauts, and Half-Life 2.
Planescape: Torment: Textual Storytelling
In P:T, storytelling is integrated directly into the gameplay. The game is essentially a textual adventure, and pretty much everything you learn about the story you learn by executing one of the two primary actions in the game: talking to people (the other one is killing things). Without having experienced the game for yourself this might sound really, really lame. However, it isn't, not in the context of how the game works in general. You learn things about yourself, your allies, and the world around you by talking to people -- and your allies, and the world around you (trufax; play and see). The story itself is pretty linear; there's no real way to change the major thrust of the plot, but the story IS sensitive to player choice and reacts appropriately, to the extent that the narrative possibilities (represented here as dialogue choices, people who're willing to talk to you, etc.) that you can explore change depending on how you act. My point here is threefold:
(1) The storytelling is incorporated directly into the gameplay.
(2) It's textual.
(3) It incorporates player choice.
I think P:T's fusion of storytelling and play involvement is simply genius. But let me make one last point absolutely clear: Torment is NOT a text-based RPG. It's actually a highly, highly visual game. I hear that Phoenix Wright is a good counter-example -- that IS a text-based RPG, but I've not yet played it (come OOOON postal system, work with me here), so I can't elaborate. From what I understand, the gameplay is pretty much entirely text-based -- there are visuals, of course, but your interactions are all textual choices. Torment is not like that. In Torment, you walk around, explore nooks and crannies, touch things, pick them up, steal shit, kill people, and talk to everything and everyone. It's not the game itself that's textual, it's the storytelling.
Final Fantasy VIII: Visual Storytelling
In retrospect, I realize that FFVIII is unique among the Final Fantasy line in how much it makes use of body language, visual analogy, and other visual forms of storytelling. Before FFVIII (say, FFVII or any of the pixellated games), it was simply not possible to express a wide range of emotions through the characters themselves. First let me preface this summary by saying that I'm talking about in-game graphics, not FMVs. The FMVs are pretty much all about body language (when people and not scenery are the focus), but FMVs are rare and don't carry the weight of the storytelling -- the parts between the FMVs do.
So. Use of body language. FFVII could, to a limited extent, but the technology just did not let Square articulate the bodies well enough -- the body language there was, at best, a caricature. (Let me note that I do not use "caricature" in a derogatory fashion here -- I mean simply that the body language, due to technological limitations, was exaggerated and distorted, which is not to say that it couldn't be expressive or effective.) FFIX suffered from a similar, but not identical problem -- the technology was there for much more detail and realism, but the style of the game was, again, a bit of a caricature. The 3D sprites were expressive, but they were still distorted in appearance, not very realistic. FFX, meanwhile, while it had every opportunity to do so, for some bizarre reason just didn't use body language as much as it could have. I suspect that this was because of the shiny novelty of voice acting -- the game developers were relying on the voices to tell the story and neglected the bodies a little because of it. I can't speak for FFXI, but FFXII again suffers no dearth of realism but again there's just not that much body language -- with the possible exception of Ashe. Before you come down on me, let me continue on to the pivot around which these comparisons turns -- because all of these assessments are relative to the use of body language in FFVIII.
Which is prodigious.
Before the advent of hyper-realism, FFVIII was the only FF with non-super-deformed sprites and with an express goal of being as realistic as possible. The human figures are correctly proportioned and move in a really believable way. So when people hunch their shoulders, twitch involuntarily, or shake just a little, with rage or fear -- you believe it. And Square used this believability to the utmost. FFVIII is undeniably largely textual, if nothing else because Squall will never, ever shut up in his head, much as I love him, but since Squall is the only character whose head we live in, everyone else has to tell their story some other way. And they do it with their bodies. Watch Quistis in the secret place after the dance -- her body language carries the impact of that scene: watch her slump on the railing, then stand a little straighter as she talks to Squall, watch her turn her face away a little. This is just one example out of many, but Quistis and Zell are good to watch for body language -- Zell is just immensely expressive, while Quistis is heartbreakingly stilted in expressing emotion; her body gives us the real clues.
But that's not the only form of visual exposition in FFVIII -- it is also, in my opinion, the game to make the most use of visual analogy. A good example is the constant juxtaposition of Rinoa and Edea -- watch the opening sequence; watch any FMV where they interact. Many of the FMVs in FFVIII can be seen as so deeply visually symbolic.
But the storytelling in FFVIII is also largely independent of player action (aside from a few small changes or a few scenes you miss or see depending on your party, for example). The story's not something you seek out or accomplish; it's something that happens to you and around you.
Psychonauts and Half-Life 2: Exploratory Storytelling
At first it looks pretty damn weird to group the two together, but, setting aside the vastly different themes, looks, and even genres, I want to focus on a key similarity in the storytelling: it is highly exploration-based and visual. You have to seek out the story, and when you find it, you can't read it, you have to see it and interpret it for yourself. Torment's storytelling was exploratory as well, but it was textual and relatively straightforward. FFVIII had a heavy visual element, but it was not interactive. Both Half-Life 2 and Psychonauts do something that partakes of both but isn't quite either.
In Psychonauts, of course the basic plot is told in the usual fashion: you play through it. However, the very basics of the plot doesn't present a full picture of any game's storytelling. Psychonauts takes a unique approach to sidequests and completion quests: your reward is, most of the time, stories. You're exploring the psyches of various characters in the game, and as you clear out their mental cobwebs, corral their emotional baggage, collect figments of their imagination, and ferret out their nightmares, you can, if you pay attention, learn their stories. The typical reward is a small set of pictures (just pictures, no words) that depict pivotal scenes and stories from that person's life. Collect enough of these, and you come to understand why these characters are the way they are; in many cases you understand their very insanity. While all the pictures are done in the game's easy, cheery style, the stories themselves might be funny but more commonly they're highly tragic -- and highly visceral. These little slide shows aside, there are other ways in which exploring will give you images to piece together into stories -- one very memorable occasion will occur if you explore deeply enough into out-of-the-way corners of a cheerful, well-adjusted character, you will run into the place they keep their nightmares -- and that place is terrifying and says so much.
In sum, the way to get story out of Psychonauts is to explore and collect images and interpret them. Half-Life 2 is, surprisingly enough, very similar. I admit striaght off to never having played the game myself -- I only watched someone else play through it. Thus, I will let someone who HAS played it speak for me:
This quote really jived with my lasting impression of the game -- so much of the storytelling comes from exploring and looking.
So this kind of storytelling is largely non-textual and completely player-dependent: you'll only experience it if you explore, pay attention, and do interpretive or deductive work.
In Sum...
So hopefully I've outlined some of the kinds of storytelling I've found in games, and hopefully I have picked interesting kinds -- we all know about the usual kind with cutscenes and lots of static text.
What interests me here, what I was worried about when I considered the topic, was how interactivity works with or against storytelling. I've been worrying at the problem, wondering how authorial fiat can possibly combine with the necessary interactivity (I mean, what else is a video game?) to make for something that is both good storytelling and good gameplay. Maybe the examples I've picked aren't necessarily either, but I DO think they uncover a range of possibilities for answering this question, some left-handed approaches, something besides the click-through movie approach.
Not that there's anything inherently wrong or bad about "click-through movies" (a criticism I've heard tossed out against Squaresoft/Square-Enix games a lot). This doesn't necessarily make them bad or badly told stories, though it possibly makes them less original and probably not very good as games.
So, like I said. Not many conclusions. Just some observations.
EDITS: I've gone through and made some minor corrections and adjustments. The only ones really wroth noting are a little elaboration in the Torment section, after I sum my three points about it; and I accidentally said "Squall" instead of "Zell" -- you're supposed to watch Quistis and Zell for body language, not Quistis and Squall.
Totally pretentious subject line aside, I won't actually be writing that much here. This is more like a note-to-self: Talk about Planescape: Torment A LOT at some point in the near future.
Basically for a while now I have been trying to train myself to think more critically about the media I consume. This happened around the same time but independently of a realization: I am an unrepentant and enthusiastic media maven. I read books and comic books and graphic novels and even plays; I watch TV shows, cartoons, and movies; I play video games; I look at art; I listen to music. I think any creative medium, especially any medium that can tell a story (and if I dig deep enough I discover a belief that every medium can), is valid, and can be compelling, and is no "better" than any other.
I've recently read and been pointed to several posts about the media hierarchy (click the links inside, too). I've also been thinking a lot about storytelling in an interactive medium -- namely, video games. Bizarrely enough a discussion on the same topic started right when I joined The Escapist after someone pointed me to a brilliant review of Psychonauts (another video game I need to write about, which comes with my highest recommendation). Given this syzygy I have given in and admit that I will just have to start talking about the subject.
So. Storytelling in video games. I will have to write posts and posts on the subject, but the point of this post is this: I have been going through, in my mind, all the video games I'm familiar with and trying to think about them critically and I have realized that Planescape: Torment is probably the best game I'm aware of. This isn't an honour I gave it willingly, nor does P:T predispose me to liking it -- it scared the shit out of me and I generally dislike playing PC games. And yet, I have to admit that I ended up really liking it. I came to this realization on my own, and then I emerged from my latest bout of seclusion to read about video games and have discovered that pretty much every time people want to talk about storytelling in video games, about just damn good games, about video games transcending the barrier between art and entertainment -- Planescape: Torment kept coming up. Often mentioned alongside P:T are things like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus for mood and atmosphere, or Psychonauts for originality and creativity (and see this RATHER SPOILERY article for an analysis of Psychonauts as art).
This surprised me, even though it shouldn't have. I'm not even sure why it surprised me. For one, no one else I had talked to had even heard of the game. Of the four games mentioned above, P:T was, in my experience, the most obscure, followed by a tie of ICO-Psychonauts, and with SotC leading in familiarity. I was so used to hearing about things like Halo 3 being hailed as the pillars of video game achievement, I guess, that it surprised me that these completely left-field, strange, uncategorizable games were what people saw as leading the vanguard of the video game revolution.
If nothing else, this gave me renewed hope. I'm not sure for what. It's comforting that there are people out there, vocal, respected people, who will hold up oddball games like this -- and not just because they get so little recognition (out of the liking upopular things is deep school). These people are willing to discuss these games and talk about them as art, as interactive stories.
I guess I was also surprised to discover that I might have good taste. Considering that I mostly swim in a sea of guilty pleasures (Blind Date comes to mind; I have absolutely no shame), it was strange to discover that if I thought hard enough about what I really consider to be good I came up with opinions like these. It's not just comforting to see my opinions shared by people I respect and admire -- it's just good to feel that when it comes right down to it I'm not really that crazy; that other people are willing to think the same way I do about video games; that I'm not alone.
Anyway, what it comes down to is that I really need to go back, replay Planescape: Torment, and write seriously about it. This goes for a lot of other video games, and other media, too. I've been sitting on half-written reviews for about a bajillion things, . These include Psychonauts, uncountable books, Avatar: The Last Airbender (I'm trying really hard to think about its flaws here), and the comic book/graphic novel series Runaways. I recommend pretty much all of them wholeheartedly, but I also want to think more critically about them: their flaws and especially how they play in the space provided by their medium. Runaways, for example, is not a transcendental comic book; it doesn't push the boundaries of its medium -- it's just a really good comic book.
I don't know. But I'm looking forward to being able to talk about these things. Sadly, I won't get to Torment for quite a while -- the game requires an extraordinary investment, in terms of both time and emotion, and I just don't have enough of either to spare right now. But I've been planning on doing reviews for a while now (and I even actually wrote one!) and I guess I want to start by, sometime soon, writing a meta-riffic post on media, especially video games.
Anyway. Like I said, this is more a note-to-self than anything else, but for now I want to do an entirely unscientific and (since I'm a cheapskate free user) non-shiny poll:
Have you played either of the following games? Tell me anything that comes to mind about them.
- Planescape: Torment
- Psychonauts
Then I realize that I will never be done talking and basically that I want to natter on about storytelling in games for real for a little bit.
Much of this sudden deluge of BLAH BLAH BLAH came about from this innocuous-looking post ostensibly concerned with Squall's fabulous buttocks. While I dutifully put in my
Incidentally, I made a tremendously long comment incoherently lauding Planescape: Torment in that thread. Just in case I'm still not pimping the game hard enough.
Now.
Storytelling and Video Games: The Short Version, har har
After much research and many sessions of deep thought (lawl) on storytelling in video games in particular I've come to some interesting... not conclusions. More like observations.
Let's look at some quick case studies. My subjects are: Planescape: Torment (henceforth P:T or Torment), Final Fantasy VIII, Psychonauts, and Half-Life 2.
Planescape: Torment: Textual Storytelling
In P:T, storytelling is integrated directly into the gameplay. The game is essentially a textual adventure, and pretty much everything you learn about the story you learn by executing one of the two primary actions in the game: talking to people (the other one is killing things). Without having experienced the game for yourself this might sound really, really lame. However, it isn't, not in the context of how the game works in general. You learn things about yourself, your allies, and the world around you by talking to people -- and your allies, and the world around you (trufax; play and see). The story itself is pretty linear; there's no real way to change the major thrust of the plot, but the story IS sensitive to player choice and reacts appropriately, to the extent that the narrative possibilities (represented here as dialogue choices, people who're willing to talk to you, etc.) that you can explore change depending on how you act. My point here is threefold:
(1) The storytelling is incorporated directly into the gameplay.
(2) It's textual.
(3) It incorporates player choice.
I think P:T's fusion of storytelling and play involvement is simply genius. But let me make one last point absolutely clear: Torment is NOT a text-based RPG. It's actually a highly, highly visual game. I hear that Phoenix Wright is a good counter-example -- that IS a text-based RPG, but I've not yet played it (come OOOON postal system, work with me here), so I can't elaborate. From what I understand, the gameplay is pretty much entirely text-based -- there are visuals, of course, but your interactions are all textual choices. Torment is not like that. In Torment, you walk around, explore nooks and crannies, touch things, pick them up, steal shit, kill people, and talk to everything and everyone. It's not the game itself that's textual, it's the storytelling.
Final Fantasy VIII: Visual Storytelling
In retrospect, I realize that FFVIII is unique among the Final Fantasy line in how much it makes use of body language, visual analogy, and other visual forms of storytelling. Before FFVIII (say, FFVII or any of the pixellated games), it was simply not possible to express a wide range of emotions through the characters themselves. First let me preface this summary by saying that I'm talking about in-game graphics, not FMVs. The FMVs are pretty much all about body language (when people and not scenery are the focus), but FMVs are rare and don't carry the weight of the storytelling -- the parts between the FMVs do.
So. Use of body language. FFVII could, to a limited extent, but the technology just did not let Square articulate the bodies well enough -- the body language there was, at best, a caricature. (Let me note that I do not use "caricature" in a derogatory fashion here -- I mean simply that the body language, due to technological limitations, was exaggerated and distorted, which is not to say that it couldn't be expressive or effective.) FFIX suffered from a similar, but not identical problem -- the technology was there for much more detail and realism, but the style of the game was, again, a bit of a caricature. The 3D sprites were expressive, but they were still distorted in appearance, not very realistic. FFX, meanwhile, while it had every opportunity to do so, for some bizarre reason just didn't use body language as much as it could have. I suspect that this was because of the shiny novelty of voice acting -- the game developers were relying on the voices to tell the story and neglected the bodies a little because of it. I can't speak for FFXI, but FFXII again suffers no dearth of realism but again there's just not that much body language -- with the possible exception of Ashe. Before you come down on me, let me continue on to the pivot around which these comparisons turns -- because all of these assessments are relative to the use of body language in FFVIII.
Which is prodigious.
Before the advent of hyper-realism, FFVIII was the only FF with non-super-deformed sprites and with an express goal of being as realistic as possible. The human figures are correctly proportioned and move in a really believable way. So when people hunch their shoulders, twitch involuntarily, or shake just a little, with rage or fear -- you believe it. And Square used this believability to the utmost. FFVIII is undeniably largely textual, if nothing else because Squall will never, ever shut up in his head, much as I love him, but since Squall is the only character whose head we live in, everyone else has to tell their story some other way. And they do it with their bodies. Watch Quistis in the secret place after the dance -- her body language carries the impact of that scene: watch her slump on the railing, then stand a little straighter as she talks to Squall, watch her turn her face away a little. This is just one example out of many, but Quistis and Zell are good to watch for body language -- Zell is just immensely expressive, while Quistis is heartbreakingly stilted in expressing emotion; her body gives us the real clues.
But that's not the only form of visual exposition in FFVIII -- it is also, in my opinion, the game to make the most use of visual analogy. A good example is the constant juxtaposition of Rinoa and Edea -- watch the opening sequence; watch any FMV where they interact. Many of the FMVs in FFVIII can be seen as so deeply visually symbolic.
But the storytelling in FFVIII is also largely independent of player action (aside from a few small changes or a few scenes you miss or see depending on your party, for example). The story's not something you seek out or accomplish; it's something that happens to you and around you.
Psychonauts and Half-Life 2: Exploratory Storytelling
At first it looks pretty damn weird to group the two together, but, setting aside the vastly different themes, looks, and even genres, I want to focus on a key similarity in the storytelling: it is highly exploration-based and visual. You have to seek out the story, and when you find it, you can't read it, you have to see it and interpret it for yourself. Torment's storytelling was exploratory as well, but it was textual and relatively straightforward. FFVIII had a heavy visual element, but it was not interactive. Both Half-Life 2 and Psychonauts do something that partakes of both but isn't quite either.
In Psychonauts, of course the basic plot is told in the usual fashion: you play through it. However, the very basics of the plot doesn't present a full picture of any game's storytelling. Psychonauts takes a unique approach to sidequests and completion quests: your reward is, most of the time, stories. You're exploring the psyches of various characters in the game, and as you clear out their mental cobwebs, corral their emotional baggage, collect figments of their imagination, and ferret out their nightmares, you can, if you pay attention, learn their stories. The typical reward is a small set of pictures (just pictures, no words) that depict pivotal scenes and stories from that person's life. Collect enough of these, and you come to understand why these characters are the way they are; in many cases you understand their very insanity. While all the pictures are done in the game's easy, cheery style, the stories themselves might be funny but more commonly they're highly tragic -- and highly visceral. These little slide shows aside, there are other ways in which exploring will give you images to piece together into stories -- one very memorable occasion will occur if you explore deeply enough into out-of-the-way corners of a cheerful, well-adjusted character, you will run into the place they keep their nightmares -- and that place is terrifying and says so much.
In sum, the way to get story out of Psychonauts is to explore and collect images and interpret them. Half-Life 2 is, surprisingly enough, very similar. I admit striaght off to never having played the game myself -- I only watched someone else play through it. Thus, I will let someone who HAS played it speak for me:
I think that's also part of Half-Life 2's genius: you get an excellent story, but it's told in a way that only a game can. Information is gained by looking around at the details of your environment, exploring, and interacting. For example, at no time does any character in HL2 ever mention that the Combine are modifying Earth animals to create machines of war. Yet you can tell that they are doing exactly that when you see that the gunship you just brought down has flippers, that striders moan when you hurt them, and that the Nova Prospekt security cams shows humans with electronics implanted into their bodies. Rebel and combine propaganda, graffiti scrawled on the walls of City 17, the way the cold Overwatch voice refers to Gordan as an infection to be quarantined, newspaper clippings on Eli's bulletin board, photographs in Dr. Kleiner's lab, the things the rebel soldiers say to each other... it all adds up to a remarkable story, but one that is always dependent upon your actions and initiative. The lack of cutscenes only underscores that point further: Valve didn't make an interactive movie, and they didn't make an arcade shoot-fest. They made a game, something that few companies seem capable of doing.
Source (that discussion on stories in games I mentioned earlier)
This quote really jived with my lasting impression of the game -- so much of the storytelling comes from exploring and looking.
So this kind of storytelling is largely non-textual and completely player-dependent: you'll only experience it if you explore, pay attention, and do interpretive or deductive work.
In Sum...
So hopefully I've outlined some of the kinds of storytelling I've found in games, and hopefully I have picked interesting kinds -- we all know about the usual kind with cutscenes and lots of static text.
What interests me here, what I was worried about when I considered the topic, was how interactivity works with or against storytelling. I've been worrying at the problem, wondering how authorial fiat can possibly combine with the necessary interactivity (I mean, what else is a video game?) to make for something that is both good storytelling and good gameplay. Maybe the examples I've picked aren't necessarily either, but I DO think they uncover a range of possibilities for answering this question, some left-handed approaches, something besides the click-through movie approach.
Not that there's anything inherently wrong or bad about "click-through movies" (a criticism I've heard tossed out against Squaresoft/Square-Enix games a lot). This doesn't necessarily make them bad or badly told stories, though it possibly makes them less original and probably not very good as games.
So, like I said. Not many conclusions. Just some observations.
EDITS: I've gone through and made some minor corrections and adjustments. The only ones really wroth noting are a little elaboration in the Torment section, after I sum my three points about it; and I accidentally said "Squall" instead of "Zell" -- you're supposed to watch Quistis and Zell for body language, not Quistis and Squall.
no subject
I hope you didn't get the impression I was slagging off your choices of games to spotlight; anything but! There well may be a better game than P: T out there, but I've yet to find it, and I'd love it if someone told me about it. But accessibility is a pretty big issue. I mean, for example, I'm not a big fan of shooters to begin with, and MGS3 was frustratingly, brutally hard at some points; I often threw up my hands and figured it was too hard to master... but the story was so compelling, I just had to go back and try again, simply to find out what happened next. But the average person who isn't into video games... well, if it gets much more complicated than managing the arrow buttons and pressing X every once in awhile, they're probably not going to be very interested. Whereas Psychonauts... assuming she is not blind and palsied, you could sit your 95 year old grandmother down with it, and she could get the salient points.
Both of the links I clicked on led to YouTube videos, which I'm afraid I haven't got the leisure to watch right now, but Psychonauts as art... are you a member of the Awful Forums (http://forums.somethingawful.com)? The best discussion I know of is there, but it's members only and no use to link to if you're not. However, if you're interested in the subject, I'd highly recommend these (http://pc.ign.com/articles/585/585122p1.html) interviews (http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/pearce/) with (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3149196) Tim Schafer (http://grumpygamer.com/2003636) - they aren't particularly meta, nor do they deal with fandom in the slightest, but the man talks about why he does what he does, and gives some great insights.
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Oh no, I didn't think you were putting down my choices; I'm just trying to lay my limitations on the table. I'm a novice when it comes to thinking critically about media and analyzing them and so I'm trying to be sensitive to my own limitations -- i.e. I have no education, experience, or even casual reading on the subject and also I haven't played truckloads and truckloads of games dating back to the original Pong.
As for accessibility, lord! I'm currently trying to get through MGS and Silent Hill (I have this thing where I HAVE to play series in order or I explode and seriously it's hard tog et that stuff off walls) and god am I sorry I'm such a goddamn story enthusiast. I'm playing the games because I hear the series have good stories(*), despite the fact that I suck big time at action and horror gives me nightmares. I have two kinds of accessibility problems: one is just technical difficulty; the other is emotional investment. The technical is pretty straightforward: I suck at shooting things, am kind of dodgy on platformers sometimes and basically the only thing I'm good at skill-wise is racing games, for whatever reason.
Meanwhile, the emotional investment. I get really emotionally invested in stories, so when I know something is a big emotional investment I'm wary of approaching it -- I just don't have the emotional energy to spend. So anything horror is basically a hard sell for me. I have a deep love/hate relationship with horror -- well done horror is so visceral and does that evoking-emotions thing I go on about so well, but christ, I don't actually LIKE being scared. I think. Who the hell knows, it's such a deeply instinctual reaction I can't even judge it. Usually I get into horror for the story -- to find out WHY or HOW this happened, and honestly good horror often has EXCELLENT plot and some of the most fantabulous storytelling ever -- that's waht makes it GOOD horror. Like I said, love/hate.
And once again Psychonauts just totally bypasses my difficulty/emotional censors because it's so goddamn friendly-looking. Tim Schafer: 1, My Gut: 0.
Meanwhile! I do encourage you to check both the video and the article. It's really short, just 4 and a half minutes -- and while he's really more than a little foul-mouthed he's hilarious and acerbically insightful and I wasted an hour I didn't have watching all the rest of his reviews even when I hadn't played the games. The article is just that, an article, and I will admit right away that I'm a fledgling in the world of video game meta, so if it's actually not good at all compared to what else is out there I apologize. But I like it.
I'm not a member of Awful Forums (I'm a lurker, I swear, I just emerge and spew a few thousand words one or twice a year), but I am intrigued and grateful for recs, so I'll make a point of investigating. Thanks! =D
(*) Okay, I admit it, part of my interest in MGS et al is that Snake just seems goddamn awesome and I thought maybe I should play the game and actually get to know him. Sue me; characters tie with storytelling for my top motivation to experience media.
In which I rec Thief: Deadly Shadows
REGARDLESS, T:DS is the third installment in the series and I have a barely nodding acquaintance with the other two -- but in this case I was watching my SO play and got absorbed in it before I realized it was a sequel. Damn. Honestly though it stands pretty well on its own. It has a generous helping of issues, but I remain won over by its many good points. It's a first-person game, but the idea is that you are a sneaky, slick thief, not an armored tank with a rifle. The most amazing thing about the game is its use of light -- your task is to sneak through the shadows, so you have to really pay attention to the lighting -- from torches, candles, lanterns, the goddamn moon ARGH ARGH ARGH, etc. and that part is really well executed. But to be honest there are three things that really really matter to me from this game.
- First of all is the plot. It's hard to say why without being spoilery but let me just say that it's another game start only looks innocuous until you know enough of what's going on to be really goddamn scared. It really isn't a horror game but that just makes the scary parts more frightening.
- Second are some (not all, good god) of the FMV-ish cutscenes. This is just pure hedonism on my part. Some people don't like them (and they are admittedly kind of clunky half the time, pretty hit-or-miss) but the good ones have the most original, luscious look I've seen in cutscenes to date and I drool over them endlessly.
- Third is the design of a specific level. Overall there is some fantastic level design in this game but one level (called the Shalebridge Cradle; the review I linked devoted an entire section to it) is hands-down the best level design I have ever seen, in no small part because it scared the crap out of me. I did mention that this game had scary parts, right? Anyway, there's also a SPOILERY article (http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=618) devoted just to that level. The blurb says:Don't read it before playing the game, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER, but its existence should give you the general idea -- worth checking out.
Like I said, the game's far from perfect, but worth the investment in my opinion for the juicy bits.
Reposted due to stupidity - sorry!
In contrast, I've always been a little surprised the MGS games don't have a fandom to rival Gundam Wing (you are not wrong; Snake is more goddamn awesome than our simple, mortal minds can comprehend). Nude white-haired bishies! An anime nerd! Giant robots! The undead! Canon homosexuality! It's practically custom-designed to make fangirls' hearts to go pitter-pat, yet there's practically nothing out there. But I think I understand; I'm no super FPS master, but I've been playing Quake for nearly a decade, and there were a couple of points that nearly stopped me in my tracks because I simply couldn't do them. I can only imagine how difficult it's got to be for someone whose idea of twitchy gameplay is FFX-2 combos; but it's a shame to see such a wonderfully rich series get passed over like that.
TL;DR - sorry! What I meant to do is point you towards another game by the same folks that made Thief: System Shock 2. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2) I understand your desire to play games in order--I'm the same way--but let me hasten to assure you that the first one is utter garbage and only related to this one in the vaguest sense. It's more of a straightforward shooter, but it consistently comes up in "scariest games of all time" lists, and with good reason. The sound design was unparalleled for its time (honestly, I can't think of anything to top it save perhaps Fatal Frame 2, or The Darkness), and features one of the most unusual plot conceits (from a sheer storytelling perspective) I've ever run across. Your character arrives on the scene long after the horrible catastrophe has taken place, and unravels the mystery by checking the logs the victims left behind as you make your way through. I know, doesn't sound too exciting, but... well, any more would be spoilers, and it really has to be seen to be believed. Preferably alone, in the dark, with a pair of good headphones on. :)
Re: Reposted due to stupidity - sorry!
IN SUM Thief rocked pretty damn hard in my book. There were so many little things wrong with it but so many big things right. Also I just adore Garrett. That helps.
(Incidentally one of the things that was so very wrong was the AI awareness level, especially when it came to sound, wherein sometimes I would be crashing around like a retarded elephant and the guard five feet away wouldn't bat an eye and other times Garret would like breathe funny and the drunk, half-asleep guard halfway across the room will be at my throat with a sword. What what what. I remember a good number of frustrating instances where I would pick up every loud, clangy object in sight and throw them at walls, floor, and even the goddamn guards trying to get their attention, to no avail. At this point usually I just went "Bugger this" and shot everyone.)
But jesus christ the goddamn Cradle. That place is not even funny. And since Thief is the kind of game you really kind of HAVE to play at night, or at least in the dark, because otherwise you can't see what the bloody hell is going on re: the sneaky-sneaky, the Cradle kind of is all set up for a great sucker punch of sheer terror.
Part of what I love about the Cradle actually is how the scariness kind of comes out of nowhere with respect to the rest of the game. Most of the time when you're sneaking around levels stealing things you can feel vaguely smug about it, secure in your superiority. And then there's the Cradle. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely missions in the level with a distinct air of freaking creepy about them, but the Cradle takes this to a whole new level and builds this up to a kind of crescendo of terror.
It's great. I hated it. It was terrifying.
As for MGS! I suspect you're right, that the intersection of fangirl-attracting traits and fangirl-friendly gameplay is probably the problem -- said intersection not being very large. Like I said, I admit to being in it for two reasons: I hear the series has a great story and it has Snake in it. If I'm really honest with myself probably it's more the latter than the former >.>
You can't blame me. I swear. I don't even know the man and he's awesome even from this distance.
We're back to the accessibility/approachability issue -- and maybe I think part of the problem with MSG is that it doesn't SEEM like a place woobie fangirls like me would find so much to love -- I mean, we ARE talking camo gear and giant robots. Both are awesome and sexy but neither really screams: PLOT, GAYNESS, AND ORIGINALITY WITHIN!
As for System Shock 2! I have heard of this! (Incidentally I have Fatal Frame 2 right now, courtesy of a friend, and it has been eying me from the coffee table for weeks, daring me to play it. WHY are so many good games so goddamn scary???) Honestly I have nothing whatsoever against FPS -- I'm just kind of BAD at them. I dunno, I'm really good with Link's bow and slingshot in Zelda games? That's kinda FPS mode? Maybe it's because most FPS games are kind of harder on the nervous system than Zelda and I end up going with my instinctive rather than trained reaction -- namely shoot wildly at the thing that jumped me and run the hell away. Another reason I like Thief.
Anyway, thanks for the rec! Also I will be happy to fangirl MGS with you anytime once I actually get significantly into the series. Or even the first game. Man. It sucks to love video games while being really kind of bad at them.
Re: Reposted due to stupidity - sorry!
and write fic for me to readover a gameplay choice, be it theirs or the developers'.But, anyway: The Cradle! The thing that's so fantastic is that it's a cheap trick--the story has been almost entirely non-supernatural up until that point, and then they throw that at you--and it still works! Even better, they completely telegraph what's going to come, you spend much of the time waiting for the other shoe to drop--and it's still absolutely heart-stopping when it happens. As far as the guards go, it's been years since I've played it, but I actually enjoyed that aspect quite a bit. I felt it added a nice touch of realism; hey, some of the guards are better than others! It kept you on your toes. But pelting the guards with loud objects... yeah, kind of ridiculous. I hope you merely ran into a bug. (The Looking Glass folks actually still sort-of support all of the Thief games; the last patch came out only a year or two ago.)
And I understand (and appreciate!) your unwillingness to spoil. It's one of the main reasons I have a problem selling people on System Shock 2: yeah, it sounds like a cheap Doom knockoff, but it's really, really not. Yet if I tell people exactly why it's so amazing, even vaguely, they lose the completely visceral shock of realizing what's going on, and that's what makes the game shine: they managed to do that with clunky graphics and well-placed audio.
I think horror games work so well because they have a much easier time negating any issues with suspension of disbelief. A first person perspective is already pretty immersive, and throwing genuinely disturbing imagery on top of that - people are going to react! Then, too, since they're meant to scare you, it allows developers freedom with mechanics; they don't have to write hair-trigger precise combat scripts and can thus focus on making an interesting experience. People like to complain about how Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, Siren et al have awkward, slow combat systems - that's the whole point, and adds yet another degree of realism. I doubt the average gamer can identify with a character whipping out dual 9mms and going to town, but I think we can all imagine what flailing desperately with a pipe wrench at a horde of endless, all-consuming nightmare creatures that mean to devour your soul might be like. Add a soupcon of anxiety about getting killed and losing all your progress, and... it's going to make an impression. :)
And as an aside, I think you'd be perfectly justified in skipping MGS if it's giving you fits; while it's fun, it's nothing in comparison to what comes afterwards, and MGS2 does a great job of getting you up to speed.