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The Various Forms of Video Game Storytelling


CrownSlayer’s Shadow

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So I recently had an thought when it comes to story telling in video games.

On thing that I find interesting is to have branching paths for the player character to choose, but have the character be less defined by the player. Basically, you can do anything except customize your character's looks, personality, etc. which is defined by the game designer.

I look at games like Mass Effect, and see that everything is done on player choice: you choose how your character looks, how your character behaves and interacts, who they hooks up with, their decisions, their history. And that's one way to link the player into the world (or galaxy in that case) you've created. And that's great! But then there's a matter of whether or not you actually want to have a set character who you guide.

Another game I look at is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This is more in line with what I'm talking about. The character takes branching paths, but his character is more consistent and the player doesn't have as much influence over their personality or their looks as they would Commander Shepherd of Mass Effect.

Basically, we could define storytelling in three different states: Solid-state, Liquid-state, and Gasous-state.

Solid-state stories are the most common. This would be like giving the player something to eat that you chose for them; they want meat, but since they didn't specify what kind the designer takes it upon himself to give the player either beef, pork, or chicken and the player just eats what's given to them. These are stories where the player has little-to-know input on the character as a character. Everything is defined, and you're mainly just going through everything as you progress. You can't avoid any of the consequences that happened because the game dictates that they happen to you no matter what, so you're only option is to find ways to deal with the consequence put onto you. This stories aren't bad, nor are they too limited because you can still work with the themes and elements you want placed in the plot. But when you want to give the player more freedom to decide things on their own, a Solid-state story isn't the one you want to go with.

Liquid-state stories are ones which would probably give the player more freedom to define things in the game while the designer still dictates things. The metaphor he would be the game designer giving you a container to drink from, but the player fills it with whatever drink they chose that's available. Here is more of a pick and choose and see what happens. Not everything is as defined, and as such the player can actually avoid a consequence they would have gotten had they chose something else. However, sometimes they may likely get a different consequence. A player has a choice of one of several path, and each one has a benefit and consequence to it. Sure, you get to become king and can do whatever you want, but you had to sacrifice all your friends to get here; on the flip-side, you become a prisoner, but you still have your friends to support and help you get out of the situation. Either scenario, you continue on with life as it is given to you, you just decide what to do with it.

Gaseous-state stories are where the player has almost complete freedom. The game designer creates a world, fills it with the elements the player can use, but the player is completely on their own on how to go about the world. That's not to say that there are no consequences, but the game is no longer guiding you so you have to complete the objectives in whatever way you can get the job done.

The way I look at it, story telling is at it's easiest the more solid it is. There's a definite beginning and end, but the player mainly just witnesses it as it progresses. A liquid story is harder, because now the player has some choice, but the one making the story may be more attached to things and may not want certain elements to go the player's way. Gaseous plots are obviously the hardest ones, because while the player may have the most freedom here, it's also a matter of getting your player to care.

And then there's the spectrum in how the players can influence a character's actions. The more black-and-white the choices are, the more likely the player will play the system to the on which the game says is the "good path" and mainly to experiment with the "bad path" to see afterwards. Now obviously that isn't the case for every player because some like to try the bad path in video games. But the labeling of the choices can be rather one-sided. If you want a more umbigious choice system, you have to give each and every choice a consequence the player won't like but a benefit that kinda makes up for it. Obviously, "join the bad guy" plays to a rather black-and-white form of storytelling, because it instantly tells you that you can be a bad guy if you want. But "Join this rebel to help the country" sounds less ambiguous, because you don't necessarily know if it's the right or wrong path; it could very well be neutral, and depending on how you play further from their would it influence whether this was a good idea or a bad one to the player. If the person decides to kill you off because you didn't do something that would have been essential, that would mean that the player probably made a bad choice. But if that same person who would have killed you in this scenario gives you a bonus because, although you didn't do what was requested you managed to do something that far outweighs what he planned, then it makes the person feel like they made a good choice for their play through. Moral grey at it's work.

How do you look at storytelling in video games?

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I tend to find gaseous-state games have the weakest stores (as you said), because, for example, in Fallout 3, you can skip the ENTIRE FIRST HALF OF THE STORY if you just happen to stumble across the right shack in the middle of the desert.

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I swear I made a topic like this s couple months back.

Was it on video games in general?

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You know, I'd like to give a shout out to Majora's Mask for this. It's a strange hybrid between a Solid-State story, and a Liquid story to me.

The main adventure is a pretty solid state, and doesn't really branch too far, but then you realize that the main adventure just isn't the story of the game. It's the plot device that directs the player on where to go, but doesn't get the player invested in their quest. It's solid because of how little choice a player is given to change their experience with the main quest. And the player could progress through this quest without batting an eye at any of the side quests. And the game rarely ever force the existence of these side quests on the player, save two time. At that point, it is up to the player to figure out what lurks about in Termina, and the 3 day system provides an interesting set of choices.

It's true, the choices are presented in a simplistic manner of do, don't do, or fail, but that may just be enough, because thanks to the repeating 3 day system the player can experience the consequences for their actions.

If you decide to leave the Romani ranch, then you've doomed Romani to probing from aliens, and have let the ranches livestock get stolen.

Or what if you fail the Anju and Kafei quest at a critical moment. You couldn't get back Kafei's mask. So now Anju sits alone in the stockpot inn, waiting for the lover who will never come.

These liquid consequences allow the player to grow more invested in the world and understand the plight of the people of Termina. However, the game also does something very masterful by forcing you to restart from the beginning. It embeds a slight frustration into a first time player, who probably would be angry at the fact that all their hard work was gone, and the people whom they helped so much, would have to go through that suffering again. But they can't do anything about it until the moon is gone. It is one of the best uses of a solid story aspect being used to remind players of what they're fighting for, and how futile their efforts are without solving that main problem.

It that use of a solid and liquid gimmick that allows the player to get more involved in their quest and in the game's overall story.

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I tend to find gaseous-state games have the weakest stores (as you said), because, for example, in Fallout 3, you can skip the ENTIRE FIRST HALF OF THE STORY if you just happen to stumble across the right shack in the middle of the desert.

I actually gotta give it credit for that. See, the entire first half is about finding out where your father is. In any other game you'd expect the location where he is to be inaccessible for some contrived reason until the PC gets to the specific quest where they know where he is. But in Fallout 3 there's no barrier. If you go to where your father is immediatelly after leaving the Vault you'll find your father and the story continues on from there.

I call that REAL player choice in determining the story. I completely agree that open-world western-RPGs tend to have weak main stories, but their strength is that you can define the player's storyline yourself by having full freedom in which locations you visit and which adventures you have. Hell, in Elder Scrolls you can ignore the main quest starting points and go have your own world-travelling adventure without any Oblivion Gates or Dragons to deal with along the way.

Personally, I love any RPG where YOU are the player character. That's why I don't like the JRPG practice of having set characters that you only control outside of cutscenes. Maybe I don't wanna be Ryuodo Habawaka - maybe I wanna be Swythe Marlock the theif-mage hybrid, or Conan O'Hannon the literary scholar barbarian. Hell, sometimes I wanna roleplay in RPGs.

Liquid slash gaseus story is the kind for me. The game should have a story and a clearly defined end-goal (witch multiple resolutions, naturally), but you should have freedom in how you explore the world and set the pace yourself. Which characters you meet, which quests you complete, which moral choices you make - that sort of thing.

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I'm really fine with any "state of matter," so to speak, it's the execution that matters. What I don't like is when a writer should be telling a solid state story but throws in arbitrary mechanics to make it seem more malleable than it actually is. Like inFamous or Bioshock; these aren't choices with lucid consequences, they're simply a series of triggers for discrete events.

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I think you've come up with some very strong definitions there. Bravo.

I respect all three types, and believe all three should exist. Everyone has different tastes and all should be catered for. Personally, I prefer games which are solid-liquid. I'm a big fan of stories. If I'm reading a novel, I don't have any interest in affecting the outcome, just finding out what it is and how it arises. But in a game, you're expected to put in the legwork yourself. If that's the case, I think it's only courteous to let you meander when the mood strikes you.

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I also generally prefer execution over "form".

While JRPGs are generally solid-state stories, one particular series of JRPG actually did the whole liquid-state thing LOOOOOONNNNNGGGG before western RPGs even touched such a thing with a ten-foot-pole. Shin Megami Tensei, originating on the SNES, chronicled a war between the heavens and demons, nether truly right or wrong (in fact, God himself is a massive douchebag most of the time and he was even the final boss in the second game no matter route you took), each side on the balance of law and chaos - rather than a 'good' or 'evil' morality system, with things being more ambiguous, in a moral way - the forces of heaven are Knight Templars who want all beings to worship God, even if it means taking away their free will, and the demons are social darwinists who believe purely in free will and survival of the fittest. And if you don't fancy either side, you can take them both out and take the neutral path, focused more around humanity, individual choice and inner strength as opposed to relying on an outside power.

SMT3: Nocturne went all-out by providing several possible endings based on various points of view and philosophies, of how you could potentially reset the world, or restore it to its original state, or stop the cycle of rebirth itself. It's somewhat complicated. The Persona games are a bit simpler, as they all have a 'true' ending, but it's kind liquid mainly in the various relationships you form with various people, which is a huge part of the games, and defining what kind of character you are, even though he/she has a set design.

In any case, though, I never really got that much into some western RPGs that aren't made by Bioware. Bethesda's games always feel incredibly overrated, and the only really good bit about Bioshock was the confrontation with you-know-who. I prefer games that also define your character's personality through actions rather than words (aside from the token "press a button to do something good or evil" bullshit) - a pacifist run in Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Iji will result in a vastly different outlook by the end compared to if you go about shooting everyone dead (Iji in particular had no dialogue choices whatsoever, EVERYTHING that happened is the result of your actions rather than anything you say), and Spec Ops: The Line had sections where you could make decisions where it isn't explicitly spelled out to you (such as firing in the air to scare off a crowd of civilians rather than shooting them), and the game treats them like legitimate options, which is a very refreshing thing these days, as many game designers these days seem determined to railroad you constantly.

It's a somewhat complex issue and one that I'd like to continue talking about, but I wanna hit the sack, so, yeah.

Edited by Masaru Daimon
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