How can we achieve better storytelling in videogames?

[Piorn]

In my opinion ,it also depends on the people playing it. I, for example, find it very hard to get into a story when I never talk to an NPC, like FEAR or Splinter Cell.
In Bioshock,the characters at least had faces and there weren't too many of them so it went very well.

Fahrenheit is a great example for how to build up the tension, but unfortunately the second half of the game was a big letdown(in my opinion). The optional QTE to for example read peoples minds really added something to the gameplay,and the splitscreen that showed different locations or camera angles gave the game a rather cinematic look (and I liked it).

 

[stompy]

I have the perfect solution for both camps.

Camp 1 - Just for the Gameplay - give them a SKIP CUTSCENE button.
Camp 2 - Just for the Story - give them a SKIP GAMEPLAY button.
Camp 3 - Who want both - give them achievements for being good gamers.

Yes, this is what we need... but I think camp 2 might as well watch anime then...

As for my solution, I'd... well, I actually don't have an issue with the traditional cutscene thing. I feel that ,in games that have stories that are worth it, trudging through the gameplay is my reward. If it gets too much, I can always go on the net...

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

To every man his own of course, but it occurs to me a great deal of the complaints with long cutscenes could be silenced by always making them skippable. Sure, in games with longer cutscenes or dialogue you'd get the sensation Yahtzee described in Mass Effect, that the game is resenting you somewhat and you forget where you are or why you're doing this. Pace the cutscenes- packing all the story information into one or two crazy-long ones makes them unwieldly and dry. If every scene contains information pertient to something happening in the actual gameplay and filler dialogue (something I hear MGS4 has in abundance) is kept to a minimum, boredom becomes more difficult.

Honorable mention should be made to the Metroid Prime series, where pretty much all the story is delivered in scans; you only read as much of it as you want, and the cutscenes are all short, usually introducing some huge new boss monster in a roaring frenzy. Again, not for every game, but they did that really well IMO. Even if you ignored every data and lore scan, you would eventually figure out where Phazon is from, what it does, and that the Pirates are seeking it out like it's the new oil. 1st Rule of Entertainment: show, don't tell. Or at least that's true for movies...

 

[Gahars]

Games can offer completely different experiences than other art forms.

Game stories that take advantage of this, like Bioshock, can succeed and really move the art form forward.

 

[zebubble]

All cut-scenes should have a PS3 video view speed thing, where it goes 1.5 speed. Easy to understand dialogue, but faster than usual.

 

[Crazyshrink]

they could make more cutscenes interactive like "press x not to do die" that was in RE:4 and the like
it would especially cool if they did this during pivitol moments in the plot
the player would be shocked but still have to react

Press X not to die is probably one of the worst game mechanics to have been put into games.

What if the quicktime event was like a choose your own adventure novel? X = do something crazy. Y = do something safe. Either choice could send you down a different chain. It'd be sort of like a dialog tree, except it's an action tree that lets the player still have some meaningful input on the cutscene.

for a game that has more than one way to play thru it like a man hunt or a rpg press x to fight the first bad guy with a gun or a wizard staff, you pick that and the story and npcs and game shifts to a gunplay centered element, if you press triangle and pick up razor wire or a dirk then it shifts to stealth play. you could also chose to kill the bad guys or join them instant good ending and bad ending.

 

[Crazyshrink]

they could make more cutscenes interactive like "press x not to do die" that was in RE:4 and the like
it would especially cool if they did this during pivitol moments in the plot
the player would be shocked but still have to react

Press X not to die is probably one of the worst game mechanics to have been put into games.

Quick-time events are risky at best. They require action from the player at a point where the player's mind is programmed to be given a rest - cinema.

The real horror [http://stonebytes.blogspot.com/2008/05/quick-time-events-simon-hates-u-remix.html] of a bad QTE is to rely on a binary mechanic to either continue the story or slap the player with a large game over. These moments should be layered, offering options, various ways to pass a given sequence, and it should only be over time and after several unsatisfying inappropriate choices that the player should loose.
There's nothing exciting nor epic dying because you didn't press button O. That's actually very idiotic, and we seriously need to move beyond that.

yes like if you press x not o you get clipped by the bullet and not headshotted or like in re4 when you press multiple butons and have 2-4 qtes in a row you should not always die. god of war used qtes to show killer moves why not have a cut scene where you press buttons to move thru it you could have a bad guy swinging a sword at you an d blabbing his evil plan to you the longer you stay alive the more you hear or you can press l1 and skip to the next part.

 

[Sylocat]

The modern gamer on average appears to have grown tired of cutscenes in their games. So I pose this question... how can we reconcile Story and Gameplay, this is not a debate about which is better, this is a discussion on how one can write/tell a GOOD and potentially COMPLEX story that meshes well with the gameplay where neither are sacrificed at the expense of the other.

Any thoughts?

I have the perfect solution for both camps.

Camp 1 - Just for the Gameplay - give them a SKIP CUTSCENE button.
Camp 2 - Just for the Story - give them a SKIP GAMEPLAY button.
Camp 3 - Who want both - give them achievements for being good gamers.

In SSBB, the story mode (Subspace Emissary) did this, sort of. Well, you couldn't skip the gameplay altogether, but after each cutscene you had the option of watching it again in the menu. You could go to the menu and watch it all as many times as you want.

So, Camp 2 is almost satisfied: You only have to actually play the game ONCE. After that, you can just watch the story uninterrupted, all you want (and you can fast-forward and rewind, too... or at least skip to a different scene).

I'd like to see an FF game do this.

 

[Takatchi]

I think, unfortunately, the only way for better storytelling, real quality storytelling, to be balanced with gameplay is to invest more money into the making of the game. Professional writers need to be hired, directors need to be informed and involved and working with the story writers, and more content needs to be put in.

Remember the days of multi-discs games? Did we really complain all too much when we had to switch over to disc 2 in our favorite title? Nowadays, if you think about it, a game that spanned 2 bluray discs would be epic in its undertaking, and could look good, sound good, play good, and have a driven, in-depth story.

The problem? Production costs, for one. They wouldn't balance out, I don't think. Not too many people play Bluray, not enough to make up for the production cost it would take to fill those discs and market them. You could make a four-disc-long epic on today's dual-layered technology, but it'd likely hit the shelves at $150US, and no one would buy it. At that point, well, developers wouldn't bother again.

Still, one of the biggest points of what is or is not "good" story lies in the gaming demographic. Final Fantasy players enjoy their story and their RPG element; Madden players don't give two tosses about a story. A company like Square-Enix will probably invest more in a satisfying storyline, while other developers may have to play to a wide variety of crowds.

Regardless, I think one of the decisive factors is balancing the production cost and time versus sale returns. A company is likely to blow its load on a means to make the game look and feel like top-of-the-line playtime, with whatever's left over going into story and actual writing.

That's my two cents, at least.

 

[Squarewave]

You know that old saying that goes something like "you can please some of the people some of the time. but not all of the people all of the time" Thats the way story telling is in games. Some people like/want book like (very detailed) in games, others want movie like, and others still want no story line.

It's a lot harder to write a good game story that gets a large audience then a movie or book. As you add in factors like people wanting linear, or free form, people that want to skip the story, people that are afraid they will miss part of the story if they don't search every detail.

I personally think that within 50 years movies will be replaced with story driven games that last a few hours

 

[Kshandamionreal]

More/better options if you're deciding the player's morality. Games are always claiming how many different options you can take, but only boil down to being Savior or Slaver. Big example: Bioshock. Save EVERY girl and you're a saint, harvest two (one is a hidden "trial" girl) and you're the devil, harvest every girl and you're the Super Devil. The only different in the last two is how angry the VO is for what you did.

GTA4 made the option system very smooth in that you can choose to spare/kill some people which'll either pay you back or screw you over without drastically altering the overall game. For example, when choosing between killing Playboy X or Dwayne, I killed Playboy based on him being an selfish ass and sympathizing for Dwayne, which was a hint that he'd make up in the long-term, which he did as I not only got X's place, a deep life story from Dwayne and of course, two henchmen that were CRUCIAL in heavy firefights.

If I'm deciding the character's morality I don't things to end with him/her being pure good or pure evil unless I actually PLAYED him/her to be pure good/evil otherwise give me some shade of gray that fit with the fact that I just gunned down 12 officers yet saved a baby from a burning building.