Interactive Narrative Means Choosing How Invested You Really Want to Be

[Gladion]

I do not get the defensiveness though... do you people not get taught these things at school? I always see this absurd level of defense always for the younger and still inferior Cinema/Gaming.

The defensiveness might be coming from your obscenely elitist manner of making your point. Calling one medium superior over others because it has, to date, produced more positive results, is not only an assumption, but also a matter of taste, and, moreover, very much owed to the fact that it is simply older. That does not make the medium itself superior.
There are things that cinema has achieved that written literature could never dream about. I would like to ask you to imagine, if you will, a written version of Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void or, if that is more to your liking, an actual literary version of 2001 (not the short story on which it is based, an actual adaptation). Similarly, every Hitchcock film is based on an inferior book.

Again, the way you make your case is, frankly, infuriating. You're writing in an overly patronizing voice, stating questions of taste as facts, and don't give proper argumentation; instead, you replace this (very necessary) step with the repeated emphasis that what you're stating should be considered factual truth and sign off with (seemingly?) feigned surprise about how people can even consider another opinion.

Finally, the notion that film was not able to show internal thoughts and struggles, and that character development is generally an issue for the medium is, sorry, laughable. Internal thoughts and struggles have been depicted in film for decades, and not just in inner monologue, and characters develop from A to B to X,Y,Z all the time.

 

[pilouuuu]

There's room for different kinds of storytelling in games, but when gaming is at it worst is when it tries to emulate cinematic storytelling reducing playability and with that I mean cutscenes that take control away from the player and QTEs.

I really like that there are so many ways to tell stories in games:

- cinematic storytelling
- environmental storytelling
- adventure games
- choose your own adventure
- procedural storytelling
- audiologs
- cutscenes

I think gaming is at it best when it takes advantage of its unique ways to tell stories. One thing I dislike is when cinematic storytelling doesn't give the possibility to shape the story depending on your decisions or do so at the last moment like in Mass Effect 3. A good example is Chrono Trigger with its 13 different endings.

The best way to do cutscenes is when they are interactive, something partially done by Valve with Half-Life 2.

I also like when games let you create your own stories through gameplay like in Crusaders II. You can also mix that with more traditional storytelling like in XCOM. Dwarf Fortress takes it to another extreme. Even GTA V lets you create your own narrative with its sandbox, alongside traditional cutscenes. I think it would benefit much more for having something closer to having proper graphics, but the possibilities of something like that for gaming is amazing.

A mix of traditional storytelling and procedural storytelling like in Sunless Sea and 80 Days is also what I think games should aspire more to.

I also like the experimentation in Dishonored that gives you unique narratives depending on how you play. A game like Bioshock Infinite would have greatly benefited from a similar approach which takes me to another criticism of games. If games did not focus so much on violence we would have more varied experiences.

My ideal storytelling in games would be something that has a big open world that lets you live in it, have a job, get married, have the most mundane kind of life, but you could meet people that follow their own routines and find quests in which you have the option to complete in different ways, violently or peacefully. There would be a lot of environmental storytelling, but also characters with scripts, but their dialogues would depend on how you behave in the game. It would be like a mix between Skyrim, Dishonoured, Ultima and Lucasarts adventure games.

But when there are linear games with traditional cinematic storytelling I think developers could at least hire a good writer and create a story that is at least as good as a film's one! And I also like the fact that some games are only gameplay like Doom and Rocket League, but you still have all those cool stories relating to how that match went or how you managed to fight all those monsters. Some games need to let you speak to the monsters and others let you shoot them.

The beauty of games is that they are varied and there is not only one way to tell a story with them.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yet again you post with nothing at all to back up your claim. What can books do that TV can't do?

Show internal thoughts, struggle and character development. TV has issues with that, it can not do it directly, at least not well.

This is just the easiest example. I do not get the defensiveness though... do you people not get taught these things at school? I always see this absurd level of defense always for the younger and still inferior Cinema/Gaming.

Also, Game of Thrones is one of those TV series that relies on cheap thrills to hook the viewer. It is not helping your cause at all.

Every time you reply to me you state things as if they are facts just because you believe something to be true without any proof whatsoever to back it up exactly like the post I'm replying to right now (no facts, just opinion). You can't even cite one thing literature does that TV/film can't do. TV/film can do things literature cannot; for example, I can take in more content in a set period of time in a visual medium because I don't have to spend time reading adjectives and descriptors, I just see it all instantaneously. I don't see how TV can't do internal thoughts, struggle, character development. House has far more content and character development than the literature version of Sherlock Holmes. The show is basically an 8-season long character study, what book series can even compare to that?

I like Game of Thrones but I don't think it's anything too special. It just demonstrates TV can take time (and lots of time) developing plot and characters regardless of how well or poor it is executed in GoT.

And what this guy said:

The defensiveness might be coming from your obscenely elitist manner of making your point. Calling one medium superior over others because it has, to date, produced more positive results, is not only an assumption, but also a matter of taste, and, moreover, very much owed to the fact that it is simply older. That does not make the medium itself superior.
There are things that cinema has achieved that written literature could never dream about. I would like to ask you to imagine, if you will, a written version of Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void or, if that is more to your liking, an actual literary version of 2001 (not the short story on which it is based, an actual adaptation). Similarly, every Hitchcock film is based on an inferior book.

Again, the way you make your case is, frankly, infuriating. You're writing in an overly patronizing voice, stating questions of taste as facts, and don't give proper argumentation; instead, you replace this (very necessary) step with the repeated emphasis that what you're stating should be considered factual truth and sign off with (seemingly?) feigned surprise about how people can even consider another opinion.

Finally, the notion that film was not able to show internal thoughts and struggles, and that character development is generally an issue for the medium is, sorry, laughable. Internal thoughts and struggles have been depicted in film for decades, and not just in inner monologue, and characters develop from A to B to X,Y,Z all the time.

 

[elvor0]

First one is that reading requires imagination. Unlike TV (and movies), books require the reader to imagine the events playing out in their head. And, when one sees that directly adapted into a visual medium, the viewer will possibly be disappointed because what the way they thought it played out is often different than what they see happening screen (And, is likely, not as exciting).

The second is that traditional TV shows are designed to hook the viewer to keep watching the series the coming weeks. What this means is that TV shows often fall into the same traps as comic books (You know, the left-field @$$hat plot twists at the end of the issue, watch 24 if you want a great example of this). Some shows have gotten away from this with the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime, but often those shows also fall into the pit of making sure that the show is shocking enough on the first episode that viewers will continue watching the rest of the series (Despite it's overall quality). The thing with books is that they, often, escape this because you won't honestly know how good a book is until after you bought it and read about a third to half of it.

A third one is the time taken to delivery the story. When one reads through a book, the chapters are not restricted to being a certain number of pages or words. With TV shows, you have to compress everything into a 20-45 minute slot (With breaks for commercials). What this means is that some events become rushed and others are stretched as filler versus books which can take all the time they need.

Also, IIRC, the average person reads about 600 words per minute, meanwhile shows and movies can only muster about 100-150 words per minute (And, with games, it's about 16 WPM).

-TV does have the imaginations of a group of people putting together a work of art vs 1/2 (the author/the reader). For example, Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly was written differently and Nathan Fillion added his input and the character evolved. If Firefly was book, the character would've been different.

He's/we're talking about the audience experience, not the creator.

I really don't think he's saying TV doesn't require imagination to create, but it doesn't require imagination to /watch/, it's an entirely passive viewing experience.

 

[Groverfield]

While this sort of gameplay-gamestory interaction is nice, I always feel that it separates the player base in an awkward sort of way. Like you'll be talking to a person about dark souls lore, and a not person hears you talking about games, wonders what game your talking about and when you tell it, they start discussing their favorite methods of wrecking newbs that have the gall to use a humanity in their house, and the conversation closes with the infamous "Dark Souls has a plot?" question.

DO??OM on the other hand seems to interact the story with the plot just enough that you know that there's a plot going on, whether or not you interact with it... but it seems closer to "Borderlands done right" than anything else as far as comparatives.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

"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.

I think this is a false assumption. It is for what calls me to games anyway. Challenge is not a large component in why I choose one game over another; story is the primary component in that process, actually. This wasn't always the case of course, and as I have gotten older I think I have trended more towards appreciation of the writing of a video game in terms of character depth, world lore and depth, and story overall. This means my acquisition of investment comes more from the delivery of the game's exposition - however it is delivered - which build those things much more than the "challenges" of gameplay. I need to be hooked on the character or the world or the story to want to engage the challenges of the gameplay, or I simply move on to something else, since game mechanics are if not standard then at least fairly similar in most cases when it domes to games. So much so that we all know what's coming when we start quests most of the time - a fetch, a kill, a craft, a combo of the three in some manner, etc. How that is dressed up, what immersive manner it is delivered in and what the game's story or the character's story is doing to make me care about it is what keeps me engaging the gameplay.

 

[LordZ]

The Wizardry series had real choice, real multiple endings and, in the sequels, it even had multiple beginnings. I'm not talking about the same ending with different colors and slightly different text. I'm talking about, picking who wins a war level of different.

Speaking of conversations, you could actually type responses to NPCs. It wasn't as sophisticated as some of the bots you find these days but it was pretty good for a series as old as it is.

I never really had the chance to play the earlier parts of the series but 7 was nearly a sandbox level of do what you want, when you want. Yet, there were chronological plot paths for you to follow, should you choose to. Of course, you had to be careful not to get curb stomped by enemies you had no hope of winning against by following the story. That said, you were free to go and get yourself hopelessly slaughtered, if you really wanted to run off to a high level area.

Wizardry 7 has been the bar I've measured RPGs by since I first played it in 1996. It's depressing how far most modern games fall short of it and in so many ways. Sure, the new games are pretty and the combat is sometimes more exciting but they lose in nearly every other aspect.

Edit: I thought I was replying to the other post he made on this topic. I would have just deleted this but I doubt anyone will read it at this point anyways.