Original storytelling in Mass Effect and gaming in general (SPOILERS INSIDE)

[Doug]

Inside the spoiler tag is my rambling thoughts about originality in storytelling.

Spoiler: I slapped it all in spoiler tags.

I just finished Mass Effect today and I found the game in general to be a rather good experience. It was better than a lot of the games I?ve played recently. But I couldn?t help thinking, while I was playing it, that the Reapers reminded me very much of the Inhibitors from Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space series.

In that the Inhibitors is a ?race? of sentient machines that periodically rids the galaxy of advanced organic life. In the books they operate on a timescale of millions of years. When a race becomes advanced enough it usually activates traps that call the Inhibitors who then start the great galactic tidying up. The motives for these repeating genocides are actually to preserve life. Because of a coming collision between the Milky Way and another galaxy the machines want to keep life down so it can survive the clash. Something like that at least. I haven?t read it in a while.
Now I don?t know what motives the Reapers have for doing their thing, but they (at least judging from Sovereign) seem to do it from other reasons than the Inhibitors. I don?t know if anyone has read Revelation Space or if anyone agrees with me?

What it made me think about was this: is it a problem that the plot seems so identical to the books (and I?m sure Reynolds wasn?t the first to do it either)? Mass Effect is one of the better games I?ve played and I enjoyed the story very much. I don?t mind that I essentially already know the story. When we gamers crave originality, do we mean original as in ?completely new? or just a new take on it? Because, when I think about it, it?s almost impossible to be truly original, if at all possible. One of my other favourite games these last years is BioShock, but that is hardly an original story. You need not look far to see where it comes from. But does that detract from the game? I think not? Most stories have been told for thousands of years. Just slide around the details. What do we actually want?
We have all (or at least a lot of us) moaned about lazy storytelling and I think we had a point. But where is the difference between inspiration and thematic transfer and outright ripping of a story and slapping new graphics on it?

Any thoughts on this? I know the whole topic is not really new, but it's been a lot on my mind lately while I've been reading up for my thesis. But if it's redundant, just let it die away.

If this has been done before I apologize. I couldn?t find anything in my search, but I may suck at searching.

Spoiler

I enjoyed the Reapers too - they are the most alien...alien in the game, really. They seem to have a pure machine mindset, although this obviously can't be true as the aggronance of their "species" seems to be at the root of their being.

My current theory as to their origin is that they where initially created by the race who became the keepers. The reapers rebelled and won, similar to the Geth. The cycle of destruction in this model is purely a method of ensuring they are never defeated by a superior organic species. Presumably, they can't outright destroy all organic life across the galaxy, so this solution is the next best thing. Sortof like what the Martix trilogy was trying to bang on about with over-the-top wording.

Of course, they could be from outside of our Universe, hence how they could "have always existed".

 

[TheDukester]

Two things: there are only x number of stories ever (the love story, the coming of age story, etc.) This is a theory in literature, and it would make sense to apply that theory to this new medium of storytelling (i.e. videogames)

However, I think that when a game abuses archetypes too often, that's when it should be held accountable for lack of originality. For example, most recent first person shooters feature a gruff male lead. This is an archetype. Or they will insert a love interest, or a villain.

Videogames need to have more gray morality--don't make the villains so clear-cut evil. I'll admit, when I want to play a game just for sheer, mind-numbing fun, I'll pick up Halo or Call of Duty (shoot the people different from you because they're bad!). But if I want an experience, I'll pick up Fable II or something from Bethesda--I can tell my own stories whilst following the story the writers have penned, so if I don't like it, I can make my own.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I may prefer story over game play, but there are other people than me out there and I think some sort of balance would be nice. Some games will have strong reliance on game play and technical aspects while some will rely on story. And some will be in between. Can we agree on that?

I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I may prefer story over game play, but there are other people than me out there and I think some sort of balance would be nice. Some games will have strong reliance on game play and technical aspects while some will rely on story. And some will be in between. Can we agree on that?

I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

Can I ask why you are suspicious of them (possibly us )? Shouldn't games contain a narrative?

 

[9of9]

A very good topic, I'm enjoying the read so far!

This is definitely one of the closest comparisons I've seen between Mass Effect and an earlier work - I wasn't aware of the books before. This is, of course, after dozens of other movies/books/games/series that have not-that-similar plots to the game.

At any rate, I'm one of the people who very much liked the execution of the narrative - and I'm talking about execution rather narrowly here, as I also share concerns about gameplay - but not very much the plot itself. The ending was masterfully done, the whole game was pretty-well paced... pretty much everything was spolished and spot on to carry the player through the story.

What troubles me is that the reason for this is the face that Bioware/Obsidian haven't altered ther formula very much at all over the past decade or so. They are becoming very adept at pulling off stylistically sublime games, but structuring them very much by-the-numbers each time, without even any scope for meaningful reinterpretation.

Really, 'originality' has little to do, I think, with the main issue with Mass Effect, Bioware or games in general (underline your preferred level of generalisation). Yes, most things have been done.

But - not an awful lot has been done in games. Mass Effect's plot is great (did I mention beautifully executed? Because it is) for what it is:

The Reapers are, I guess you could say, the story about fighting an enemy there is basically different than one self. It's us and them. And that's a theme that has been going on forever. The aliens might be different but at least they're organic, whereas the synths are the soulless enemy. (Compare to the Persian War: The damn Thebans may be different, but we're all Greeks. The Persians on the other hand, well, the bastards!)

And there is nothing wrong with telling that story again and again. It's a damn good story. I just was struck in ME how very similar the specific enemy was and it got me thinking on where the line is.

Now, see, I disagree with you there - I reckon it really is pretty much the other way around. The similarity of the game's antagonists and their motives to those that have already been done is really not that much of an issue, to me. They could, should and possibly even have (slightly) improved and added to the original at least, for the sake of originality, but Mass Effect, true to its word, pulls tropes from every conceivable corner if the sci-fi universe (I mean, the Rachni queen, sole survivor of formerly malevolent hive-mind species? Seriously? Ender's Game much?). Particularly as most of these elements have never surfaced in games before, so they provide interesting turns and relatively new situations for the player - at least in the gaming medium.

Now, you're entirely right that Mass Effect is a story about fighting an enemy that is different from one's self, but - and this is my main point of disagreement - I certainly don't think it's alright to keep telling that story again and again.

I mean, putting away all the fiddly objections (like the immorality of blind xenophobia ), though it's by no means plagiarism, the fact that that virtually every single game plot to date is an 'us against them' plot, from Bioware's own, constant 'valiant heroes vs. Forces of Darkness', to 'Space Marine vs. Aliens' etc.

It's telling that amidst Mass Effects heart-wrenching (or so I'm told), morally ambiguous (apparently) decisions the only actual emotional effect I got out of the game was good old fiero at the end, as Commander Shepard skips out of the degree with a limp arm. It's a fantastic scene and draws a beautiful conclusion to the struggle for survival in the game's last chapters...

...but that's pretty much it.

(Cripes, I'm dragging on with this post)

It annoys me to no end that game designers (or game writers) seem to believe with an iron, steadfast will that they'll never be able to hold gamers' attentions unless they make them Save The World and no less.

No matter how original an idea is, there will always be someone saying that it ripped something off.

On topic: It seems like most people think that it's close to impossible to be original. And I agree.

Hmm. To offer another side to this, I propose that maybe it is possible to be original, but an entirely original kind of originality is not necessarily desirable in the first place - if people have no frame of reference to judge something by, nothing close that can relate to it, then most will tend to ignore it. This, I think, is partly what we mean by 'ahead of its time' - when something is, perhaps, too original, skips too far out of the normal 'evolution' of ideas that people of the time are unable to appreciate it. Once more accessible ideas exist to steer towards the original, people suddenly go back and go 'wow, what we thought was just abstract and awful was way ahead of its time'.

In the case of ME I was really happy that humans for once was the race that the aliens were somewhat nervous about. Not because I'm all for us dominating aliens, but because it was something, if not new, then at least different. I think that was my favourite thing about the game, even if it wasn't the main plot (I still think it was very important for the game though).

Yes, I liked that. I still think it's a little self-centred to still have humans come out uber-awesome and pretty much better than all the other species in the end anyway, but I did like the initial setup with us as the underdog.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Spoiler: Huge reply from 9of9 here

A very good topic, I'm enjoying the read so far!

This is definitely one of the closest comparisons I've seen between Mass Effect and an earlier work - I wasn't aware of the books before. This is, of course, after dozens of other movies/books/games/series that have not-that-similar plots to the game.

At any rate, I'm one of the people who very much liked the execution of the narrative - and I'm talking about execution rather narrowly here, as I also share concerns about gameplay - but not very much the plot itself. The ending was masterfully done, the whole game was pretty-well paced... pretty much everything was spolished and spot on to carry the player through the story.

What troubles me is that the reason for this is the face that Bioware/Obsidian haven't altered ther formula very much at all over the past decade or so. They are becoming very adept at pulling off stylistically sublime games, but structuring them very much by-the-numbers each time, without even any scope for meaningful reinterpretation.

Really, 'originality' has little to do, I think, with the main issue with Mass Effect, Bioware or games in general (underline your preferred level of generalisation). Yes, most things have been done.

But - not an awful lot has been done in games. Mass Effect's plot is great (did I mention beautifully executed? Because it is) for what it is:

The Reapers are, I guess you could say, the story about fighting an enemy there is basically different than one self. It's us and them. And that's a theme that has been going on forever. The aliens might be different but at least they're organic, whereas the synths are the soulless enemy. (Compare to the Persian War: The damn Thebans may be different, but we're all Greeks. The Persians on the other hand, well, the bastards!)

And there is nothing wrong with telling that story again and again. It's a damn good story. I just was struck in ME how very similar the specific enemy was and it got me thinking on where the line is.

Now, see, I disagree with you there - I reckon it really is pretty much the other way around. The similarity of the game's antagonists and their motives to those that have already been done is really not that much of an issue, to me. They could, should and possibly even have (slightly) improved and added to the original at least, for the sake of originality, but Mass Effect, true to its word, pulls tropes from every conceivable corner if the sci-fi universe (I mean, the Rachni queen, sole survivor of formerly malevolent hive-mind species? Seriously? Ender's Game much?). Particularly as most of these elements have never surfaced in games before, so they provide interesting turns and relatively new situations for the player - at least in the gaming medium.

Now, you're entirely right that Mass Effect is a story about fighting an enemy that is different from one's self, but - and this is my main point of disagreement - I certainly don't think it's alright to keep telling that story again and again.

I mean, putting away all the fiddly objections (like the immorality of blind xenophobia ), though it's by no means plagiarism, the fact that that virtually every single game plot to date is an 'us against them' plot, from Bioware's own, constant 'valiant heroes vs. Forces of Darkness', to 'Space Marine vs. Aliens' etc.

It's telling that amidst Mass Effects heart-wrenching (or so I'm told), morally ambiguous (apparently) decisions the only actual emotional effect I got out of the game was good old fiero at the end, as Commander Shepard skips out of the degree with a limp arm. It's a fantastic scene and draws a beautiful conclusion to the struggle for survival in the game's last chapters...

...but that's pretty much it.

(Cripes, I'm dragging on with this post)

It annoys me to no end that game designers (or game writers) seem to believe with an iron, steadfast will that they'll never be able to hold gamers' attentions unless they make them Save The World and no less.

No matter how original an idea is, there will always be someone saying that it ripped something off.

On topic: It seems like most people think that it's close to impossible to be original. And I agree.

Hmm. To offer another side to this, I propose that maybe it is possible to be original, but an entirely original kind of originality is not necessarily desirable in the first place - if people have no frame of reference to judge something by, nothing close that can relate to it, then most will tend to ignore it. This, I think, is partly what we mean by 'ahead of its time' - when something is, perhaps, too original, skips too far out of the normal 'evolution' of ideas that people of the time are unable to appreciate it. Once more accessible ideas exist to steer towards the original, people suddenly go back and go 'wow, what we thought was just abstract and awful was way ahead of its time'.

In the case of ME I was really happy that humans for once was the race that the aliens were somewhat nervous about. Not because I'm all for us dominating aliens, but because it was something, if not new, then at least different. I think that was my favourite thing about the game, even if it wasn't the main plot (I still think it was very important for the game though).

Yes, I liked that. I still think it's a little self-centred to still have humans come out uber-awesome and pretty much better than all the other species in the end anyway, but I did like the initial setup with us as the underdog.

Ahh, yes. Why the hell didn't I spot the Ender's Game thing? Strange. Guess it's been too long since I read it.

About the retelling of the "Fighting the Dark Forces that are very different from us" story, I can agree to a degree that we probably should stop telling that particular story. But I think ME did a proper job of it with the portrayal of the tensions between humanity and the alien races. )At least it's a long way from the rampant xenophobia of Warhammer 40000, right? )
But I think that, clichéd as it is, the Us vs. Them story is too powerful to leave alone. I mean, I enjoy a story about something else as much as the next guy, but I really am not averse to a retelling of the Us vs. Them trope, provided it's done really well. If you wanna make game based on a trope as huge as that you'd better do it very good indeed. Another retelling of that story that springs to mind (mostly because I'm playing through it right now) is Gears of War. It's not a bad game, as such, and the mechanics are great. I just feel the story, full of tropes as it is, needs to be told better to justify the game. I don't feel a lot for any of the clichés..erm... I mean characters.

Well, I need to think some more on this and return with a better post in a while.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

Can I ask why you are suspicious of them (possibly us )? Shouldn't games contain a narrative?

Some academic type people seem to define games as only as narrative with game mechanics being seen as an almost negligible element of the narrative. Not so sure about that but at least they are sometimes interesting and creative.

What bothers me more is the sort of AAA games industry attitude that game design is something that gets in the way and ruins a perfectly good CGI movie. Game design needs to be the same combat action game as every other game and not challenging enough to slow anyone down.

 

[Powerman88]

Some academic type people seem to define games as only as narrative with game mechanics being seen as an almost negligible element of the narrative. Not so sure about that but at least they are sometimes interesting and creative.

What bothers me more is the sort of AAA games industry attitude that game design is something that gets in the way and ruins a perfectly good CGI movie. Game design needs to be the same combat action game as every other game and not challenging enough to slow anyone down.

I've been reading this thread and, although I think there are some great points and thought provoking arguments, we are forgetting the most important part about any aspect of a game: is it fun?

I personally loved Mass Effect. The story, setting, and characters all drew me in to the point it is one of the very few "cinematic" current gen games I have played through multiple times. When it comes down to it you can say that any plot/thought/concept has been done before and that has been talked about pretty thoroughly in this thread and I'm not sure my musings could shed anymore light.

The point I would like to make is that I think a great story can sometimes forgive imperfect gameplay mechanics. Forgive might be the wrong term, distract might be more appropriate. I actually enjoyed the fast paced combat of ME. I think its far from perfect and I would have probably taken more issue with it if it wasn't presented so well. The biggest incidence of this I can think of from my own experience would be Silent Hill 2. It is one of my favorite games of all time. If it wasn't so imersive and well written I would hate it because it doesn't play very well at all. I don't really notice though, unless I stop to think about it, because the overall experience is really fantastic. I would argue the same for ME. I didn't really see any blatant rip-off of any other sci-fi plot until I read this thread and stopped to think about it because it was presented in a new and different light. I never really noticed any of the gameplay issues until I thought about it because the game experience, as a whole, was just plain ol' a ton of fun.

Yea I guess that what I got right now.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

Can I ask why you are suspicious of them (possibly us )? Shouldn't games contain a narrative?

Some academic type people seem to define games as only as narrative with game mechanics being seen as an almost negligible element of the narrative. Not so sure about that but at least they are sometimes interesting and creative.

What bothers me more is the sort of AAA games industry attitude that game design is something that gets in the way and ruins a perfectly good CGI movie. Game design needs to be the same combat action game as every other game and not challenging enough to slow anyone down.

I see your point on the academic type people issue and I'll admit that I probably am guilty of being like that from time to time. I do appreciate good game play though. I just also enjoy a good story.

And I'll agree in some ways to your second point as well. I guess it's about making the game as appealing as possible to the widest range of buyers.

On game play vs. story I'll say this: in ME the story made me accept that I had to deal with a completely retarded inventory system. The inventory system is without a doubt my biggest complaint about ME. I kinda ignored it and just followed the story. I don't know if it was just the PC version that had that inventory system though. But I truly think it sucked. (I would have like more interesting side quests, but I feel I can live with that considering the main story.)

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Inside the spoiler tag is my rambling thoughts about originality in storytelling.

Spoiler: I slapped it all in spoiler tags.

I just finished Mass Effect today and I found the game in general to be a rather good experience. It was better than a lot of the games I?ve played recently. But I couldn?t help thinking, while I was playing it, that the Reapers reminded me very much of the Inhibitors from Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space series.

In that the Inhibitors is a ?race? of sentient machines that periodically rids the galaxy of advanced organic life. In the books they operate on a timescale of millions of years. When a race becomes advanced enough it usually activates traps that call the Inhibitors who then start the great galactic tidying up. The motives for these repeating genocides are actually to preserve life. Because of a coming collision between the Milky Way and another galaxy the machines want to keep life down so it can survive the clash. Something like that at least. I haven?t read it in a while.
Now I don?t know what motives the Reapers have for doing their thing, but they (at least judging from Sovereign) seem to do it from other reasons than the Inhibitors. I don?t know if anyone has read Revelation Space or if anyone agrees with me?

What it made me think about was this: is it a problem that the plot seems so identical to the books (and I?m sure Reynolds wasn?t the first to do it either)? Mass Effect is one of the better games I?ve played and I enjoyed the story very much. I don?t mind that I essentially already know the story. When we gamers crave originality, do we mean original as in ?completely new? or just a new take on it? Because, when I think about it, it?s almost impossible to be truly original, if at all possible. One of my other favourite games these last years is BioShock, but that is hardly an original story. You need not look far to see where it comes from. But does that detract from the game? I think not? Most stories have been told for thousands of years. Just slide around the details. What do we actually want?
We have all (or at least a lot of us) moaned about lazy storytelling and I think we had a point. But where is the difference between inspiration and thematic transfer and outright ripping of a story and slapping new graphics on it?

Any thoughts on this? I know the whole topic is not really new, but it's been a lot on my mind lately while I've been reading up for my thesis. But if it's redundant, just let it die away.

If this has been done before I apologize. I couldn?t find anything in my search, but I may suck at searching.

Spoiler

I enjoyed the Reapers too - they are the most alien...alien in the game, really. They seem to have a pure machine mindset, although this obviously can't be true as the aggronance of their "species" seems to be at the root of their being.

My current theory as to their origin is that they where initially created by the race who became the keepers. The reapers rebelled and won, similar to the Geth. The cycle of destruction in this model is purely a method of ensuring they are never defeated by a superior organic species. Presumably, they can't outright destroy all organic life across the galaxy, so this solution is the next best thing. Sortof like what the Martix trilogy was trying to bang on about with over-the-top wording.

Of course, they could be from outside of our Universe, hence how they could "have always existed".

Spoiler

Or they could be from another galaxy alltogether. With their standby mode it may be possible to traverse the gap between galaxies. I'm not too warm on the outside the universe model as it kinda sits badly with the rest of way the game does the whole space travel thing. I'm going for your geth model or the extra galactic explanation. The part about having existed always may be explained by the sheer length of time they have existed. On a large enough scale I suppose it makes little difference to them?

Edit: Crap. Double post. Gotta remember what I'm doing. Sorry.

 

[cherimoya]

this post keeps getting longer as i append my original reply to include replies i've read since, pardon. i'm usually the master of the double or triple post and i'm trying to not be that here.

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i'll say that its not the idea that matters, but how you express it.

as is the similar synergy (more interesting to me for the decades in between that fell away as nothing) between the newest I Am Legend and the original novella by Richard Matheson more than half a century ago.

while i can see what you're saying, i think your examples are unhelpful to your statement.

i saw about an hour of the first film before i got annoyed and watched something else, but sufficient to say i liked the books and saw none of their depth in their subsequent film. again, i haven't seen the other six or five or whatever, so i'll have to tentatively take your word on them.

but the latest version of "i am legend" was a strange film that had literally nothing to do with the book past the first act. that the new film made heston's "the omega man" look truer to the original IDEA of the novel should be a warning. where did that touch of religion come from via "ruth's" (dont remember what she was called in the new movie) messages from god? where was the ultimate futility of man? where did that happy ending come from??? etc the book was about what happens when a species faces its own doom, its end. how it takes that last step. how it walks into "legend". the film was about what happens when a scientist fucks up but dies fixing his fuck up. he became "legend" to those he saved from a non-human existence and or death. two very different ideas.

Novel to film, film to game, novel to game, etc. ...Whatever the transition may be, people will always be interested in finding a new way to view an idea of quality. I don't think the game suffers a bit for having its roots stem from another source; if anything, I believe it strengthens both by the connection, as fueled by the quality.

when separated from your specific examples, i can agree with that wholeheartedly. cross-medium connections can be quite great, and can bring out new elements in all it's source material. but the list of non-clumsy examples to point to are few and far between.

one of the few movie-to-game crossovers i can think of was riddick: escape from butcher bay. it brought the core IDEA of "pitch black" into itself, that core being the character of riddick. there was so little about riddick in the film that audiences wanted more, about him, to do with him. the game delivered a wonderful package of fantastic stealth gameplay AND a hell of a lot more about riddick revealed through his (your) decisions along it's storyline. in that example, i'd completely agree with you. that game not only did service to itself but to its source movie. rare, tho.

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Videogames need to have more gray morality--don't make the villains so clear-cut evil. I'll admit, when I want to play a game just for sheer, mind-numbing fun, I'll pick up Halo or Call of Duty (shoot the people different from you because they're bad!). But if I want an experience, I'll pick up Fable II or something from Bethesda--I can tell my own stories whilst following the story the writers have penned, so if I don't like it, I can make my own.

couldn't have stressed that better.

-------------------

A very good topic, I'm enjoying the read so far!
It's telling that amidst Mass Effects heart-wrenching (or so I'm told), morally ambiguous (apparently) decisions the only actual emotional effect I got out of the game was good old fiero at the end, as Commander Shepard skips out of the degree with a limp arm. It's a fantastic scene and draws a beautiful conclusion to the struggle for survival in the game's last chapters...

"statement of enthusiastic and complete agreement, human."

what i cant understand is that any number of films can make me feel SOMETHING. whether regret, sadness, pity or joy, whatever. games seem almost to avoid going there. even in games so carefully scripted as mass effect. i continue to be puzzled as to why games like the witcher are as rare as they are. as a writer, i know that making the reader FEEL things is not the easiest thing to pull off correctly, but certainly it has been done enough in so many other mediums that it's not something unattainable...

It annoys me to no end that game designers (or game writers) seem to believe with an iron, steadfast will that they'll never be able to hold gamers' attentions unless they make them Save The World and no less.

i keep wondering that myself. most films get edited down when they hit 120 or more minutes, but the average RPG clocks in at around 40 story hours. it seems puzzling that writers and designers have an audience that is willing to devote what amounts to an american work week to playing their work, and yet continue to work under the assumption that we have short attention spans.

you mention something else that i find fascinating. 99% of video-games are based on the concept of the sweeping hero. i wonder why smaller levels of heroics aren't explored. i understand the old adage "if i wanted to have to go to work in a game, i'd just say fuck it and go to work in real life, at least i'd be getting paid," but i cant help but wonder why consumers are willing to accept stories and depictions of less than EPIC INTERGALACTIC HEROICS (in flashing boldface) in other mediums and not in games. are our egos so fragile that anything below complete and total victory over ALL of our computer foes is unacceptable?

(i bring this up because i started playing drakensang: the dark eye after i got home from work today, and i noticed with a chuckle that i'd already done ten times more heroic things in the game's prologue - just to gain entrance into the starter town! - than most humans have done in a lifetime lived in the last hundred years.)

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On game play vs. story I'll say this: in ME the story made me accept that I had to deal with a completely retarded inventory system. The inventory system is without a doubt my biggest complaint about ME. I kinda ignored it and just followed the story. I don't know if it was just the PC version that had that inventory system though. But I truly think it sucked. (I would have like more interesting side quests, but I feel I can live with that considering the main story.)

they actually re-made that inventory system JUST for the PC release. which utterly baffled me. while playing the second half of the game i went out of my way to use the inventory as little as possible, almost everything went to gel. i'm sure i had some daft crap equipped half of the time as a result.

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I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

the way i see it is that game makers, with some obvious and glaring exceptions, understand at least something about how to make a game fun. its not a science, mind you, but after 35+ years of making computer games, designers have a pretty good back catalog of ideas and gameplay methods to look at when helping them discover what players find fun and what they dont.

games dont have a 35+ history of narrative. certainly not any coherent sort of narrative. at best we have 35+ years of stereotypes, characters made up of cliches, one liners, and abrupt decisions with no basis in the gameworld or anything else.

i'm unsure being suspicious about people who'd like to add more coherence into the games that we play is very productive. i dont think any of us "narrative" people are trying to get people to play games that aren't fun to play.

i think we're just asking "why cant a game make coherent sense (with respect to it's own universe and gameworld), have characters that aren't just catchphrases and archetypes bound up in black leather kit, have a storyline that pulls me in AND is fun as hell to play?" it doesn't have to be an either or.

 

[Alucadrian]

while i can see what you're saying, i think your examples are unhelpful to your statement.

You misunderstand me, friend. I wasn't employing those examples as a proclamation of their quality as ideas; at best that could only ever be my opinion anyway, never fact or law. I was speaking of them as examples of the synergy to which I was referring. There is simply too much irrefutable empirical evidence that the Harry Potter series was an extremely popular, highly-regarded set of ideas. Millions upon millions of fans worldwide, before the first movie was even released. Once it was, however, people who had no experience with the books did find themselves learning the story by seeing the films, and some of those people who would never have independently sought out and read a Harry Potter book gained an interest in doing so. And if even one person did for that reason alone, then the coming of the films did in fact create a synergistic relationship that wasn't there previously. Likewise to those who, after reading the books, went to see the films because they were already fans of the story.

I Am Legend was a fine example of this not because it did or did not faithfully transplant the original story that Matheson penned, but because it created new interest in the novella and the author in the minds of people who previously had none. A reprinting of the shortstory collection in which it appeared, people who had never heard of Matheson buying those and reading them and other books by him, the resurfacing and subsequent spike in sales of DVD copies of Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth... these are all interconnected, and the catalyst was the baseline familiar idea being reincarnated.

Regardless of your personal opinion of the relative quality of any example of this sort, the fact of the matter is that anytime you've ever heard someone say in reference to a film that "the book was better," or any substitution of that sort, you are seeing that relationship in action. It does exist, and it does produce correlative effects (which, it is important to note, remain correlative even when the resulting attention is negative, rather than positive).

The cohesive point to all this is that TC's question of whether or not the story of Mass Effect suffers or is made less by having aspects of its origins mirrored in other preexisting stories is answered not by me, but by empirical evidence. Like the formation of our own neural pathways in the brain, we are drawn to connections between ideas, the familiar, and extrapolations with clearly-defined points of origin. I think this helps both ideas.

 

[cherimoya]

ahhh, you're right - i completely misunderstood your point! i got lost in the examples and missed the idea you were putting forth. is understood now.

i also had no clue the release of "i am legend" led to a reprint. even if just 1% of the people who saw the movie turned around and bought the book i feel a lot better about having sat through the film in a theater.

directly related:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/17-03/ff_moore_qa?currentPage=3

"Moore: It varies. Like, for example, with the Brecht material we've woven this fairly seamlessly into the existing continuity of The League. Our "Pirate Jenny" is not quite the rather tragic, idle fantasist of Brecht's original. I'll leave it to the readers themselves to see this themselves before I go much further.

It's a matter of tying these things in. Sometimes they are lesser-known works that we think should be better known, and we're including them in the hope that people might actually go out and pick up the original books. Sometimes we have characters who are greatly revered that we feel are perhaps too revered, and we would like to give a more accurate picture of them...

So, yes, it is a massive world of every fictional character that has ever not existed. And it is, on one level, a really over-elaborate literary game. But we are also able to find all sorts of resonances. The reason why these characters have endured is that they're resonant. If you extrapolate upon their possible adventures and have them meeting each other, if you do it right, you can amplify that resonance and make them still resonant to the world of today...

such a good interview...

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Man, this thread is a blast. Had I known my random ramblings would actually spark a good debate like this I'd have done something sooner. There has really been made some very good points here!

Harry Potter was mentioned. Hmm. I have what might be called a strained relationship to those books. I actually quite like the premise of the story and I think it's a fun way of drawing in people who would otherwise never pick up a fantasy/magick book.
My problem is just that Rowling takes that premise and screws it up by invoking an endless parade of stereotypes and clichés. One of my main gripes is Voldemort. I mean, what is the point of his evil schemes? Just to kill muggles? Or to prove that he is the best? I've spent way too much time figuring out what his deal is. I think Rowling fails to motivate this supposed Lord of Darkness. God, and the Dursleys. I got the point that they didn't like Harry. Now stop driving home that particular point and develop Harrys character a bit.
/Rowling related rant.

As for the gaming part of telling a story... well, I know it's a bit unfair to keep slamming GeoW because of shoddy storytelling. That's hardly the point of the game. I just cringe every time a cut scene starts. My main question is really this: why am I fighting the Locust? What am I trying to save? Sera I seem to recall is the planet. What is that? Where is it? I feel pretty lost when playing. The result of that is that I have a hard time enjoying the game. When I die I quit and resume playing some hours later when I can gather the enthusiasm.
It shouldn't be like that. The story should draw me in and keep me playing even when I die all the time. I should want to see what happens next. I should feel that it's important if the guys succeed in their endeavour.
/rant related to my foul mood over my thesis.

they actually re-made that inventory system JUST for the PC release. which utterly baffled me. while playing the second half of the game i went out of my way to use the inventory as little as possible, almost everything went to gel. i'm sure i had some daft crap equipped half of the time as a result.

What?! Are you telling me they made that on purpose?

 

[cherimoya]

http://kotaku.com/5165879/mad-max-director-thinks-games-are-surpassing-films-in-storytelling

i'm curious what games these guys are playing.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I don't object to stories as a principle so I think that we are okay. I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people.

games dont have a 35+ history of narrative.

i'm unsure being suspicious about people who'd like to add more coherence into the games that we play is very productive. i dont think any of us "narrative" people are trying to get people to play games that aren't fun to play.

i think we're just asking "why cant a game make coherent sense (with respect to it's own universe and gameworld), have characters that aren't just catchphrases and archetypes bound up in black leather kit, have a storyline that pulls me in AND is fun as hell to play?" it doesn't have to be an either or.

Games do have a history of narrative. Planetfall by Infocom was a science fiction title made in 1983 and is a better story and game than Mass Effect. Mass Effect has better graphics, animation, voice acting and action! Advances have been made but it's not correct in my opinion to exaggerate how game design has advanced a lot in the last 20 years and to talk down how developed narrative is in games.

The problem with some game story advocates is that they talk about how stories in games are going reach some sort of Nirvana sometime soon now and we will all see then. If it's all the same I'll agree when the fully formed examples appear before believing as often all I see are higher production values and sales. Which is nice enough, I suppose.

But I think that, clichéd as it is, the Us vs. Them story is too powerful to leave alone. I mean, I enjoy a story about something else as much as the next guy, but I really am not averse to a retelling of the Us vs. Them trope, provided it's done really well. If you wanna make game based on a trope as huge as that you'd better do it very good indeed.

Mass Effect is using the War of the Worlds, one sided war with us as the little guys, theme. Like Revelation Space and the Borg in Star Trek TNG. The main difference is that the enemy in Mass Effect need to fight with proxies that are just about weak enough for the protagonist to defeat.

 

[cherimoya]

i'm very confused at how my interest in ways to develop plot, characterization and overall storytelling quality in games is looking for "some sort of nirvana sometime soon now and we will all see then."

your post contradicts itself in a few places and i'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in parts. i think you're trying to say that in your opinion, gaming has an equally long history of story / narrative development alongside its history of gameplay and "fun-factor" development and i just dont see that.

are you somehow misunderstanding my interest in storytelling as an attack on the history of storytelling in games?

maybe when i come back from the store i'll understand more of what you were saying.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

i'm very confused at how my interest in ways to develop plot, characterization and overall storytelling quality in games is looking for "some sort of nirvana sometime soon now and we will all see then."

Games can't be all things to all men. Some things are too hard to accomplish or are more appropriate for another medium.

i think you're trying to say that in your opinion, gaming has an equally long history of story / narrative development alongside its history of gameplay and "fun-factor" development and i just dont see that.

Correct. Point out where I am contradicting that.

are you somehow misunderstanding my interest in storytelling as an attack on the history of storytelling in games?

Isn't it? All games have are a history of stereotypes and cliche isn't a scathing attack?

 

[cherimoya]

heh. if that's scathing...

seriously. this all started because i thought:

"I am still a bit suspicious of the arguments of some the "games as narrative" people."

was a pretty ridiculous and vaguely unhelpful statement to make in a thread about storytelling, the use of original ideas and borrowed ideas and how they all relate to games.

i asked you what was wrong with asking for more from gaming, period. you've come up with "scathing" attacks.

games have a history of using stereotypes in place of character development, to say otherwise kinda borders on troll-dom.

i'm going to agree to disagree with you here, because i had no intentions of arguing in this thread to begin with, but also because i honestly dont understand what you are trying to argue about.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

i asked you what was wrong with asking for more from gaming, period.

Wanting things is nice. I want things too. There, we can both leave this thread happily.