Bostur said:
From a video game perspective a lot of the classic RTS games have that. Starcraft, WC3, several of the C&C games. From a litterature perspective video games generally don't come with that kind of storytelling. There are a few exceptions but that often makes them bad games due to linearity.
The storytelling is so dependant on what the players put into it, that an external point of view will miss most of it.
From an analytic perspective even the best storytelling of any game will struggle to reach the quality of the average action movie.
Draech said:
The whole point of games is that they require input so to have a pre-written story may seem counter to the medium itself.
Now because the story is generated through gameplay it wont have the storylines, chars and thematic depth, but I think it is worth bringing into your mix just for it having a more "game" approach to storytelling.
I'll have to disagree on this note. You both seem to be talking about the concept of emergent storytelling, which is a valid concept (and is studied near the end of the first semester of this course), but is in no way the only--or even most important--way in which video games effectively tell their stories.
You're taking an approach to video games as an art form that essentially excludes any sort of art that isn't specifically centered around interaction. But interaction isn't the only thing video games can do, it's just the
unique thing of which they alone are capable. If you center a medium's entire artistic merit around it's unique properties at the expense of others, suddenly a film should be judged by its visuals alone, and dialogue would be viewed as entirely extraneous. Animation would be about nothing more than how unrealistic and surreal it can look, regardless of story or writing (which would automatically put Ren and Stimpy as inarguably artistically superior to anything Pixar has ever made). It really doesn't work.
When it comes down to it, as much as I love the "pure interaction" type of storytelling you are talking about here, and as much as I do enjoy a game that gives me a high level of interactive freedom, the best uses of interactivity I've ever seen are placed within a linear narrative in order to heighten its impact. If you haven't yet, play Bioshock, then look up some articles specifically regarding the way it played with player control during the big plot twist reveal. That was absolutely brilliant interactive storytelling. The guy I quote below mentions Bastion, which features a sequence near the end that Yahtzee praised for good interactive storytelling (and with good reason; it really is a powerful scene). And the aforementioned Beyond Good and Evil has a final boss that is nothing short of genius in terms of having the protagonist's psyche reflected in the gameplay itself. Interactivity and linearity are in no way mutually exclusive; the best interaction on an artistic level is often that which uses the player's involvement to increase the impact and emotional/intellectual depth of the story.
Naeras said:
I was going to say "Bastion called and would like to talk with you". Then I remembered about 15 other good games that tell stories that are either on par with good storytelling in other media, or tell stories that you couldn't actually tell in other media.
Gameplay or story don't exclude each others; in fact, they should complement each other if possible. Finding examples of that isn't hard.
See, this guy gets it. Also, Bastion is in the second semester of the course. Because it's amazing (not to mention easily accessible on both Windows and Mac).
