And Here Come the Aliens — Storytelling in Games
Why do games inevitably end with you shooting monsters, zombies or aliens, regardless of what the game was about from the beginning?
Game story design lacks some maturity, compared to other media. It seems to me that we’re too obsessed with the spectacular, or too afraid of not making a splash, that we violate one of the fundamental pieces of storytelling advice there is: keep the story believable.
The central concept in all great storytelling is the suspension of disbelief. We’re asking the viewer, reader or player to ignore all their preconceived notions about how a world works, and join you in your world for a bit. This can work as long as your story is compelling enough to keep them interested, and consistent enough that the world makes sense in the mind of the viewer, reader or player.
Why, then, is it so common in games that start out with a fairly reasonable story, there inevitably seem to be aliens, zombies, super mutants, experimental super-soldiers or some similar monstrosity near the end? I’ve played through a fair number of games with this problem, and I’ve actually quit a fair number as well.
Some games have stories that aren’t exactly masterpieces, yet they still get smashed to pieces by this kind of move. One example of this would be Far Cry — not exactly known for it’s brilliant story, but I still lost my interest when the super-mutant-experiment-soldiers showed up.
Since actual good game stories are so few and far apart, story reviews tend to look favorably on anything that actually has a story.
Game story designers fall into this trap for several reasons. I think, first of all, that it’s a sign of a certain lack of maturity — we don’t take our stories seriously, don’t focus on them and thus we don’t think they can hold their own.
For me, the story adds so much to a game experience that it deserves to be treated better. Trust me, playing the single player campaign of something like Bad Company during development, before the story elements are in place, is but a pale shadow of the final product.
Our demands on gameplay and difficulty also makes this an easy trap to fall into. Adding more HP and weaponry to enemies only makes sense to a certain point, I guess, so in order to have an appropriately difficult grand finale, we throw in something supernatural. The funny thing about this is that many times, the same games have already shown themselves to not need this. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
These thrown in monsters, mutants and aliens provide an opportunity to make something spectacular. However, the best moments I’ve had in gaming must be the ones that both made sense and were spectacular.
I hope game stories can move with time to the more mature, nuanced theme of telling a simple but powerful story in an interesting way that keeps me hooked. However, that requires us to respect the power of a story well told… among all our fancy graphics, powerful hardware and surround sound systems, we get to face the idea that perhaps the most important piece of the game shares more qualities with a good camp-fire story than with the tech labs that produced the chip we’re running.
What do you think about the state of stories in games? How would you like to see them improve?
Image credit: kevindooley on flickr
Tags: Game Design, Games, Lore, Story
Games | slicedlime | 
Saturday, July 18, 2009 22:35
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By John Davis, Saturday, July 18, 2009 @ 22:56
Oh wow dude, way cool!
RT
http://www.anonymize.tk
By ray, Sunday, July 19, 2009 @ 16:19
Best game story I’ve ever played was Chrono Trigger.
By Christopher String, Sunday, July 19, 2009 @ 16:46
Definitely agree!
Max Payne 2 had a great story line, and no huge monsters at the end. It was engrossing and I played the game all the way through.
Christopher String
wwww.chrisstring.com
By SOmeGuye, Sunday, July 19, 2009 @ 18:41
I liken video games today to porn, The story is just a vehicle for action. There’s a setup and boom time for gameplay, oh here’s some more story just to keep you going and boom more gameplay. I don’t think video games can be considered a serious art form if we keep treating story elements as a funtion of gameplay.
Unless it’s trying to be novelty it becoming cliche. Storytelling needs to be re-evaluated and the effort we put into technology needs to be also invested in how games communicate ideas, tones, feelings. Because I don’t think a cut scene is always the bestway, or neither alternate endings. I want to feel something, I want games to elicit an emotional response from me. Storytelling is a powerful tool, yet it is so under utilized in the industry.
By Tiago, Monday, July 20, 2009 @ 23:27
A game with excellent story was Appeal’s Outcast, the story was the best I’ve ever seen in a game. You get relations with the entire world of the game, and everything you do or choose, affects the entire system of the game, and how people treat you, and not in a dumb way, it had cohesion.
In my point of view, the simple stuff you do in games that make it worth the time. Like a war game for instance, you always are in the middle of the bombing, shooting and non-stop action, it looks too superficial. An example would be something like once I was playing Vietcong (great game imho), the mission said you should do patrol the area and find the enemy, then you start WALKING (not running and jumping around). When the mission ends, you jump onto the Huey, get back to base, and from there you choose your next mission. You were always living everything, not just jumping around levels and a bunch of interfaces, everything was live-action.
Problem to games today when it comes to keep a story, is that they are cutting the “uninmportant parts”. Let’s say, i invade Omaha Beach, and on the next mission i’m already in Berlin. But what happened in the time I was transiting to Berlin? It’s breaks the chain. I’ve invaded Berlin, Omaha, Iwo Jima so many times that I really don’t care anymore about the BIG stuff, little things, like starting in point X, and while I transit to mission Y, I get ambushed, a “friend” (in-game) dies and then the story keeps going, without skipping this little things that make me build the felling and the situation in my mind.
A book for example, describes the pieces of the scenario, so you can build it in your mind, and games rarelly play with our minds in a coesive way, you are always jumping between scenarios and thats about it or making nonsense choices, where in the end it’s just a waste of time and you will likelly be killing someone, gaining something, or someone where you suposelly have ‘emotional’ attachment (when in fact the player don’t gives it a ****, only if it is a powerful character) will die. Alternate endings aren’t good, I can load the game back at any moment to make another choice and see how is the other ending, or search for it on youtube, in the end, everything is too predictable.
I’ll stop here or I will end up writing an article :p