Interactive Narrative Means Choosing How Invested You Really Want to Be

[Dalisclock]

Honestly, Dark Souls has a terrible story. Now, what Dark Souls has is excellent atmosphere, and worldbuilding. Great world. Interesting world. Story of the game that you actually experience? Crap. Vague nonsense with barely anything explained, often intentionally so. And every single game in the Souls series has the same thing - nonsensical vague terrible story, great atmosphere and world.



In every Dark Souls game, you link the fire by killing a bunch of strong bosses to get their souls, and this does something, because otherwise something maybe bad would happen. Or you don't link the fire! And then maybe something good happens. Who knows, the game won't say. That's literally the story in each game.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've currently playing the first one for the first time, but yeah, this is pretty much my impression. Environments are beautifully done and well constructed, interesting backstory, but as for what's going on in the game itself? "There are two bells. Ring them and something will happen" Gee....thanks Mr. Sad Knight man. Want to be less helpful? At least he gives some vague directions before telling you to shut up and go on your way.

Attaching a paragraph of lore to items is a step above audiologs, except for the fact you need to actually go hunt for rare items to actually fill in the lore.

 

[Fox12]

Does this mean that Silent Hill 2 is bad now, Yahtzee?

Maybe there's not a clear right or wrong way to handle things. Maybe it's all just about execution.

Errr... Silent Hill 2 uses exactly the approach to storytelling that Yahtzee describes actually. You can experience it as just a horror game with puzzles, or you could look at clues more intently and discover more depth about the story. Same as Dark Souls really.

Sure, and that's great. In fact, most of my favorite stories do that. But Silent Hill does make decent use of cutscenes.

And my primary gripe is with people who complain about cutscenes, or heavy dialogue, in a game. I personally prefer the dark souls approach, but that doesn't delegitimize game like The Last of Us, which are quite cutscene heavy. In fact, I thought The Last of Us was one of the absolute best examples of using gameplay to support story in recent memory.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Now seriously. Telling the story through gameplay isn't the same as reading notes of exposition or hearing a conversation at mid-battle.

I was mainly responding to this from the article:

But DOOOOOOOM does actually have a detailed story that can be discovered by reading the in-game database, and the profiles of monsters, environments, weapons and what few NPCs exist. All of which contain many snacky world building titbits that could potentially add a greater significance to our hero's actions after he puts his coffee down and gets back in the fight. Which rather brings to mind Dark Souls' trademark style of deep narrative, told through little nuggets in item descriptions and cryptic conversations, while the exploration and combat are all that you see on the surface.

A film-style narrative presents a story as a long sequence of buildup that pays off with little returns along the way and explodes into a climax at the end. It's like a mountain, a broad situation that tapers to a cathartic conclusion at the top. In contrast, the zero-exposition Dark Souls / DOOOOOOOOM style of narrative is, on the surface, all climax.

A filmgoer wants to unwind with a satisfactory story, and time must be spent acquiring their investment by letting them get to know the characters and situations before the climax will satisfy. A gamer, meanwhile, wants a challenge, and they automatically have investment because they want to beat the challenge.

Apparently video games can't use techniques that have been fined tuned over thousands of years but must use some wholly different and extremely flawed way of telling stories. LMAO at Dark Souls story being all climax. Gamers play games to unwind as well. If gamers just want a challenge then we'd all be playing "bullet hell" games like Ikaruga.

The video game medium is unique in that it can use techniques from any other medium along with inventing new interactive ways to enhance the story. For example, having to press "shoot" in MGS3 to kill The Boss is something that adds to the emotional impact of the story while being something only a game can utilize. Why not use tried and true storytelling methods that have been fine-tuned to a near science from other mediums when that method works for that particular scene?

Video games need to be more concerned with getting good stories instead of the how to present said stories because if the story is shit, like 99% of games, then no presentation method is going to make the story good or worth the time whether you're watching the game's cutscenes or reading through item descriptions. Whereas a good story is a good story with or without the best or most proper presentation.

 

[camazotz]

Does this mean that Silent Hill 2 is bad now, Yahtzee?

Maybe there's not a clear right or wrong way to handle things. Maybe it's all just about execution.

Errr... Silent Hill 2 uses exactly the approach to storytelling that Yahtzee describes actually. You can experience it as just a horror game with puzzles, or you could look at clues more intently and discover more depth about the story. Same as Dark Souls really.

I'e played SH2 and the first Dark Souls and the similarities are skin deep (at best); SH2 has a deep story and uses a number of methods, especially cut scenes, to convey that experience. In fact I desperately wish Dark Souls were more like Silent Hill in many ways.....at least then I'd understand the point of it. (Not a gamer who plays games for challenge; I play for the story/immersion/experience; the only experience I ever felt with DS was frustration, anxiety and annoyance at the game's lack of purpose....but I know that's just me, and it is a good game, just not for my style of play experience).

 

[camazotz]

"DOOM has a better narrative than The Last of Us" should be put on Yahtzee's gravestone after he gets murdered by a mob of angry Sony fanboys.

You don't have to be a Sonybro or whatever to realize that Yahtzee has a bit of a weird bias here. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the notion that Dooooooom has a better narrative than The Last of Us. The former is...well....a fun experience that I have all but forgotten about after two weeks. The Last of Us however is a game I still think about and like to replay for the experience, and had a significant impact on how I realize I want to experience storytelling in games now and in the future. DOOOM? Fun for a bit but utterly forgettable, and I'd probably stop playing FPSes entirely if they were all like this.


EDIT: I mean, when I finally figured out all the story was loaded in to the archives to be read, I started reading them...and they were fun....but I was at best mildly annoyed at the fact that the game itself is at best pretending it has a story at all. If the story can be masked/hidden, then why the hell bother? If you can't "show" the story or create tools to interact with the story, then sticking it in ready bits is not going to make for an improved experience. Not every game has to do this, of course....DOOM is fine for what it does, but the idea that this might be some hidden holy grail of storytelling approaches is just inane.

 

[SweetShark]

Its seems DoomGuy will win a Gaming Aware for Voice Actor in a Leading Role in the future. Without saying a single word. Just using his hands.
I would LOVE to see that happening.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Does this mean that Silent Hill 2 is bad now, Yahtzee?

Maybe there's not a clear right or wrong way to handle things. Maybe it's all just about execution.

Errr... Silent Hill 2 uses exactly the approach to storytelling that Yahtzee describes actually. You can experience it as just a horror game with puzzles, or you could look at clues more intently and discover more depth about the story. Same as Dark Souls really.

I don't think so. It uses the same methods as those darn cinematic games we have today. In fact, it was one of the pioneers on that front, being the first (or one of the first) to use the voice actors for both the voice work and the mo-cap. You're essentially running from story beat to story beat in that game as well; you can't ignore it and squarely focus on the *cough* fabulous combat and puzzles.

By that fact you can also say that The Last of Us has interactive storytelling you can either invest in or ignore, since there's loads of optional conversations and notes that expand the lore. One of Until Dawn's most prominent features is that finding clues fills in giant story gaps and changes character dialoge.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I don't think so. It uses the same methods as those darn cinematic games we have today. In fact, it was one of the pioneers on that front, being the first (or one of the first) to use the voice actors for both the voice work and the mo-cap. You're essentially running from story beat to story beat in that game as well; you can't ignore it and squarely focus on the *cough* fabulous combat and puzzles.

We must've played different games because cutscenes in Silent Hill don't really tell you anything.

You mean it doesn't tell you you that James is looking for his wife in Silent Hill, but that she's been dead for three years? Or that there's a character named Angela who's looking for her mother? Or Maria who bares a striking resemblance to James' wife? Or Eddie, or Laura? The game's shocking reveal is in a cutscene. Not to mention that final text scroll that goes on for what must be 10 minutes.

I don't know how you'd be able to follow the story without the cutscenes.

 

[CyanCat47_v1legacy]

To dismiss any tool of game design as unworhty out of hand is foolish, narrow-minded and short-sighted. To say "this is bad now and therefore will be bad forever" is simply foolish. bad things can improve over time, good things can become worse over time.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You mean it doesn't tell you you that James is looking for his wife in Silent Hill, but that she's been dead for three years? Or that there's a character named Angela who's looking for her mother? Or Maria who bares a striking resemblance to James' wife? Or Eddie, or Laura? The game's shocking reveal is in a cutscene. Not to mention that final text scroll that goes on for what must be 10 minutes.

I don't know how you'd be able to follow the story without the cutscenes.

Does any of it give you clues to what is actually happening and why?

Define 'what is actually happening and why'. There's plenty of symbolism and clues scattered throughout the in-game world, but without the context of the narrative in the cutscenes these have little to latch onto. You cut out all the cutscenes, both pre rendered and in-game, and the narrative gets completely butchered. For example, without the cutscenes you'd never get an idea as to what kind character Maria is, or really any of the other characters except maybe for James.

 

[Kahani]

And these two approaches suit the different reasons that audiences buy into the two different mediums. A filmgoer wants to unwind with a satisfactory story, and time must be spent acquiring their investment by letting them get to know the characters and situations before the climax will satisfy. A gamer, meanwhile, wants a challenge, and they automatically have investment because they want to beat the challenge.

Except that this is a nonsensical false dichotomy that has nothing to do with the many varied reasons people choose to engage in both mediums. Filmgoers often want much more than to simply passively unwind, and a large part of the interest of films like Primer is trying to figure out what is actually happening. At the same time, gamers often just want a bit of mindless fun to unwind and not a difficult challenge. Casual gaming wouldn't even exist if games were all challenge all the time, and the mere existence of clickers which have precisely zero challenge shows just how little challenge many people are interested in.

Most games are far more than a Tetris-style challenge at the expense of all else, while most films are much more than a mindless Michael Bay explosion-fest. People choose to play or watch one or the other for a huge variety of reasons, and any argument that relies on pigeonholing them into a single unifying motivation will result in complete nonsense, as your argument that films and games are fundamentally incompatible continues to do.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

I used to like liner, cutscene focused games but I've kind of gone off them in more recent years. I do prefer a more interactive approach to videogame storytelling. The Dark Souls/DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM style is nice but I found with Dark Souls I didn't immerse myself in the lore when I played it, I just looked up lore videos on youtube after the fact.

As a personal preference I like games that involve making choices, like Telltale's games or Life is Strange. Even if the your choices don't amount to much it's an effective way of engaging the player in the story. But in those games I like it when the decision making is the main part of the gampeplay. Those "action" sequences (QTEs) in The Walking Dead added nothing to the game for me and I'd prefer it if they weren't there at all.

More recently I've really enjoyed Firewatch and Oxenfree. Games I like to call "walking and talking simulators". Essentially walking simulators but with the addition of a lot of conversation and dialogue choices.

I've also been playing some modern point and click adventure games which I really like. The stories are linear but I like being able to interact with the world in the way that those games offer. And modern ones have mostly done away with the idiotic moon logic of the point and click games of the '90s which would always kill the pacing of the story when you inevitably got stuck.

I guess I actually kind of like to keep gameplay and story separate. The story driven games I like are ones with minimal gameplay, and the gameplay focused games I like are ones with minimal story. There are very few games where I've found a great marriage of story and gameplay where they both feel integral to the experience and complement each other.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Now understandably critics are always seeming to seek innovation (except for when it suits them not to), but I don't understand what gameplay would have served Uncharted and The Last of Us better, they are aiming for a grounded approach, and i don't know about anyone else, but if i'm being shot at by assholes repeatedly in real life, i'm going to make damn sure i find some cover and a weapon to retaliate. It may not be mind blowing originality and Earth shattering (debatable term), but it's kind of what i'd expect to happen in reality, therefore adding to immersion within the story. To expect some hypothetical "other" gameplay is sort of weird, given the context. FPS's don't seem to have these demands.
Anyhow, on topic, most people have already said what i was going to say. Text dumps are not fun, pausing gameplay to read tiny writing is somehow better? Have you seen the amount of text in The Witcher 3 and Skyrim? Fuck that noise, i didn't turn on a game to read a ravaged book as i squint painfully at those mocking pixels! Fallout 4 had interesting environment storytelling, if one were to pay actual attention to the design. If every game used the same storytelling method, it would be a terribly boring past time.

I did count those OOO's, why oh why though? Mysteriously have intense cravings for hula hoop crisps now.

 

[CaitSeith]

Why not use tried and true storytelling methods that have been fine-tuned to a near science from other mediums when that method works for that particular scene?

Because they have been tuned specifically for expectators. But if the player is the protagonist (or has a role in it), he can't just be an expectator the whole time. The fine-tuning falls appart when the player's freewill is prioritized over the story. If you want to apply those methods as they were intended, the easiest way is to render the player passive (hence cutscenes, QTEs or just taking control for a few seconds), but overusing it kinda defeats the purpose of games focused in action (and frustrates the players that want gameplay action over story). Ironically, the action games genre is one of the most common places where narrative-driven games are found nowadays.

But I agree. Better stories are definetly needed. One of the reasons that restricting the players' actions to corridors, cutscenes and QTEs fell out of grace in the past generation was because the stories weren't very good to begin with. It's amusing how the AAA "cinematic" games tried so hard on emulate the movie techniques, but they never seem to get any better in writing their stories (pretty similar to having better graphics but worse gameplay). Just remember, the AAA doesn't aim to make their things great; just good enough.

PS: I have never played MGS3. I missed the whole PS2 games library (except for a couple of PS3 remakes).