Examples of "do, don't show" I.E. examples of telling narrative through gameplay.

[Not G. Ivingname]

I was watching the Extra Credit's episode on telling story/narrative though gameplay, and I been trying to come up with good examples if I ever get into a debate with a stubborn college English proffesor on the subject if games are art and/or one can tell a story through play.

I know the missle command one discussed in the episode (and all others discussed), the Portal 2 one where it shows you have brain damage by making you jump if try to talk, and came up with one for Crono Trigger and similar games where it shows your unprepared to actually face the big bad by making you face him several times during the game and him utterly destroying you each time.

So, what are good examples you have come with.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Super Metroid - end boss fight conveys emotion through gameplay pretty effectively. Makes Other M's "tell, tell, then tell some more" all the more terrible. But you don't actually have to have that - Planescape: Torment uses text pretty effectively, for instance.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Pretty much all of the Half-Life games. Yes, the basic story is told to you, but if you pay attention to the details in the game, you get so much more. So, so much more...

Another one is finding out who Squalls parents are in Final Fantasy VIII. It's never told directly, but if you pay attention to dialogue and certain events, the game shows you who they are.

A lot of little details in BioShock and BioShock 2 also show, such as going through Sander Cohen's art gallery. Or though the apartments.

Those are the only ones I can think off of the top of my head.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

I'm thinking but nothing is really coming to mind. You can tell stories without dialogue, but you cannot tell complex and multilayered stories without dialogue. Mass Effect, GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy 7, Halo 1, Half-Life 2, none of them would be the same without a more traditional narrative. We should never, ever forget the importance of that.

Well, I would disagree, since the first ten minutes of up told an emotional story

Spoiler

of Charles and Ele'slife together without a single word spoken, their happy times, their wish to have children
and her inability to have one using not a single spoken word.

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

 

[eggy32]

I'm thinking but nothing is really coming to mind. You can tell stories without dialogue, but you cannot tell complex and multilayered stories without dialogue. Mass Effect, GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy 7, Halo 1, Half-Life 2, none of them would be the same without a more traditional narrative. We should never, ever forget the importance of that.

Well, I would disagree, since the first ten minutes of up told an emotional story

Spoiler

of Charles and Ele'slife together without a single word spoken, their happy times, their wish to have children
and her inability to have one using not a single spoken word.

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

That was only ten minutes. When he said "complex and multilayered stories" I don't think he meant a 10 minute love story.
The story that scene told wasn't complex or multi layered. It was just telling you about how much he loved her and how it affected his life when she died.

 

[TheIronRuler]

-snip-

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

That was only ten minutes. When he said "complex and multilayered stories" I don't think he meant a 10 minute love story.
The story that scene told wasn't complex or multi layered. It was just telling you about how much he loved her and how it affected his life when she died.[/quote]

And yet it managed to be the best montage I had ever had the pleasure to see.
Without uttering a word, it brought me to the verge of tears.
And then I saw the fat kid.

 

[eggy32]

-snip-

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

That was only ten minutes. When he said "complex and multilayered stories" I don't think he meant a 10 minute love story.
The story that scene told wasn't complex or multi layered. It was just telling you about how much he loved her and how it affected his life when she died.

And yet it managed to be the best montage I had ever had the pleasure to see.
Without uttering a word, it brought me to the verge of tears.
And then I saw the fat kid.[/quote]I'm not denying that it was very moving, I'm just saying that it wasn't a complex and multilayered story.
It was simple but effective.

 

[kyogen]

College English professors worth their salt will object to you spelling their job title with two f's and only one s.

Basic argument: one can tell a story through play for the same reason that one can tell a story through any other moving image. The simple fact that the medium is more physically interactive than something like film does not exclude the possibility of storytelling.

Art? You will have to establish criteria for defining art in the first place and then detail the ways in which a game does or does not fulfill those criteria.

Examples: You are already getting plenty. Addendum: You might want to consider beginning the narrative argument on a slightly different note. It's less about the simple possibility of communicating a narrative and more about the nature of the narratives that games generally include. There is already some scholarship on video games as a narrative medium: anthropologists/folklorists tend to be most interested in them at the moment, and your college librarian should be able to help you track down a few journal articles using a database such as the MLA International Bibliography. There is also a Classics professor at UConn who blogs about games as a modern expression of the epic: http://livingepic.blogspot.com/

 

[Savagezion]

-snip-

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

That was only ten minutes. When he said "complex and multilayered stories" I don't think he meant a 10 minute love story.
The story that scene told wasn't complex or multi layered. It was just telling you about how much he loved her and how it affected his life when she died.

And yet it managed to be the best montage I had ever had the pleasure to see.
Without uttering a word, it brought me to the verge of tears.
And then I saw the fat kid.

You should watch the intro to "The Watchmen" Here is 50 years in an alternate reality where superheroes showed up in the 1940s. One of the best intros ever and only 5 mins long, no dialogue.

​

 

[TheIronRuler]

-snip-
You should watch the intro to "The Watchmen" Here is 50 years in an alternate reality where superheroes showed up in the 1940s. One of the best intros ever and only 5 mins long, no dialogue.

​

That's my number two on my list of best montages.
The reason why the Up! montage takes the first place is because it's an animated kids movie.
That movie is a M rated deconstruction of the superhero genre.
I love the watchmen.
But I can't find a copy of the graphical novel anywhere in my local retail shops.

 

[Richardplex]

Query: Can it be a character I roleplayed? as vanguard Sheperd, her charging in, and then charging to a new enemy, regenerating her barriers in the process, represented (for me) a conflict between her not wanting to die, and her wanting to die in battle, as she was weary of life and its BS.

Otherwise... damn it Richard, not forgiving you for this... Final Fantasy 13. different... classes, I forget what they were called, linked to the characters personality, and as they developed, a new appropiate class was unlocked. For example, lightning had ravager and commando, and then when she calmed down because of... that annoying child... she unlocked healer. Other guys had similar things going on. [small] you're so going to pay for portraying that game positively.[/small]

 

[ResonanceSD]

Chrono trigger is excellent at this

So is Portal, Portal 2, to a greater extent, but as has been said in several places, P2 sacrifices gameplay for story.

 

[Ickorus]

Odd one here but L4D and L4D2 do this, when you first play the game you see a story of a group of four different personalities forced to work together to survive but then you see other details telling of how the military take control over the government organisations and begin executing possible carriers or how the survivors of the first game actually pass the room housing patient zero.

I can't explain it well enough but just go and check the L4D wik and you'll see how in-depth the games sory is even though barely a word is mentioned in-game of it.

 

[Metropocalypse]

In Silent Hill when you

Spoiler

first face Pyramid Head, thinking he's a beatable foe, the game shows that you cannot overcome Pyramid Head at this point by making him literally impossible to kill. In this whole fight you run trying to attack him, he eventually walks away undefeated. The player eventually realises they were doing nothing wrong, you just cannot defeat him at this very moment in time.

 

[Tupolev]

It's impossible to tell a structured narrative through gameplay mechanics alone, at least to pretty much all current human beings. When Extra Credits discussed the functionality of Missile Command's narrative, they ignored the fact that it still requires the name "missile command" and all of the related imagery to work, both of which, text and structured image, are forms of structured communication. Gameplay mechanics are, at least currently, unstructured in its narrative communication. It's more like editing than like specific imagery or writing.

Hence, you can use gameplay to support a narrative, and help it to flow, and in this capacity it is every bit as important as editing is to motion picture. But you cannot create a narrative with gameplay mechanics completely by themselves. At absolute minimum, something else needs to add context, whether it be a word or a picture or a smell or a taste.

However, if you're looking for a game which has terrific resonance between the imagery, the sound, the gameplay, and the overall narrative flow, I'd recommend looking at the original Halo.

 

[Raziel_Likes_Souls]

I guess maybe when the story starts to affect mechanics, i.e. the ending of Crisis Core. I'm not going to spoil it, but;
"Would you say I became a hero?" should be enough to jog memories.

Or Shadow of the Colossus' whole allegory on the main characters way of thinking using the grip gauge. That works too.

 

[Katana314]

I'm thinking but nothing is really coming to mind. You can tell stories without dialogue, but you cannot tell complex and multilayered stories without dialogue. Mass Effect, GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy 7, Halo 1, Half-Life 2, none of them would be the same without a more traditional narrative. We should never, ever forget the importance of that.

Well, I would disagree, since the first ten minutes of up told an emotional story

Spoiler

of Charles and Ele'slife together without a single word spoken, their happy times, their wish to have children
and her inability to have one using not a single spoken word.

But finding good examples of this has been hard for me as well that aren't flash game or games without any kind of cutscenes (such as Bioshock/Half-Life).

That was only ten minutes. When he said "complex and multilayered stories" I don't think he meant a 10 minute love story.
The story that scene told wasn't complex or multi layered. It was just telling you about how much he loved her and how it affected his life when she died.

I understand what you're assuming, but I think you've fallen into a misconception. Mainly, that a complex and multilayered story is more valuable.

You know how on the TVTropes main page, it says how tropes are not a bad thing? It's not like as long as something falls into a pattern or fails to do something completely unheard of, it's uninteresting. I know Mario fans aren't all that broken up about always saving Princess Peach each time; you tend not to think about it if the story's presenting itself well.

For all the complexity and social commentary in a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 (and I will say - the story DID make some sense to me) it just didn't have an impact on me. Contrarily, the opening to Up did fabulously for me.

Just for the note, another of my favorite wordless scenes in a movie: The descending-the-stairs scene from Children of Men. You really have to have seen the whole movie leading up to it to understand, but it's pretty powerful and only four words are spoken (though they aren't the focus of it)

Braid's ending did it pretty well, because unlike many instances where something is told through a cutscene minorly affected by you - this revelation is entirely through gameplay, through something that's connected you to the game the entire time.
Some games like Minecraft or Mount and Blade are actually just able to let you make up an interesting story as you go. It's a solid framework to get it done.

 

[zabour]

I think Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core did it well.

Spoiler

In the last battle where Zack fights the army of Shinra soilders. No matter how many you kill they keep coming. The DMW does wonders for the narration, you feel that you know what's going through Zacks head even though he's dying. Incredibly emotional battle.