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Designing game narrative

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21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Designing game narrative

#21
post #17

I find it rather strange that the author asks for open mindedness but seemingly dismisses the whole idea of the cut scene narrative. On the other hand he praises the generated, "natural" narrative of Dwarf Fortress, Brogue and Journey. One of his remarks about Journey is rather interesting: > When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their presence and introduction. When you communicate with…

You raise a good point, but even if sophisticated AIs are not technically possible yet, predefined characters can still be done well without (ab)using cutscenes.

Re: Designing game narrative

#23
post #9

The thread linking the games Mr Lee praises is that they are, to a large extent, sandboxes. Yes, some of them have endings, but they get the player there by dumping them in a world and letting them do what they like. Portal is the least sandboxy of the games mentioned (maybe apart from Tetris!), in that it has highly structured, intentionally designed levels with well-defined goals, but it still manages to give the p…

Diablo had procedural generation for most dungeons, but also narrative.

Re: Designing game narrative

#24
post #17

I find it rather strange that the author asks for open mindedness but seemingly dismisses the whole idea of the cut scene narrative. On the other hand he praises the generated, "natural" narrative of Dwarf Fortress, Brogue and Journey. One of his remarks about Journey is rather interesting: > When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their presence and introduction. When you communicate with…

I think the overarching point is that "storytelling" simply can't work in the same manner as it does in books and movies.

If you tell a story in a cutscene, you then aren't playing a game at that point. Or if you plot out every possible interaction (kind of like The Walking Dead games) you have to limit the outcomes to a manageable level, which hamstrings the gameplay. So what's the solution? The article is arguing that you have to abandon narrative and focus on what you want the player to feel directly.

The problem is that "game literacy" is focused on all the wrong elements. A game like Doom has much better, tighter, more interesting gameplay than something like The Last of Us. (which I still really enjoyed!) And you can be moved by the story, characters etc. from The Last of Us, but it's a lot more like how you feel watching a movie. With Doom, people create their own narratives by interacting with the game, and those narratives have a different kind of power. People still tell stories about playing Doom for the first time 20 years ago with their friends. The objective, I think, is to make a game where those personal stories are directed to achieve a specific effect.

There's one example of this effect that I've read about before. There was a game in the 80s where you play a war game as either the U.S. or Russia. If you play as the U.S., you stockpile arms and try to win the war as you'd expect. But if you play as Russia, you have a whole different set of concerns - starvation, winters, limited resources, aggressive neighboring countries and other factors which lets you experience some of the desperation Russians must have felt during the Cold War. It's a pretty powerful story to tell through gameplay alone, and a story that was told through gameplay without narrative.

Re: Designing game narrative

#25

I loved the contrast of Tomb Raider and Portal - interactive, fast thinking rather than "press X to not die" nonsense during a "cutscene". I also really love the way they break down storytelling axes - dungeons and dragons adds the "interactive" axis without the "AV" one, which presents its own challenges. (if you want a good example of this, I recommend the "critical hit" podcast[1], although be warned you'll need t…

Shame they didn't mention Metal Gear Solid (PSX, 1999) initial cutscene, with the titles on-screen as if you were in a movie!

Kojima's a genius

Re: Designing game narrative

#26
Author here! Dang, I browse HN daily and didn't notice when my own article gets posted until it's too late. Anyways, glad you guys liked it. One thing that I want to clarify is that the examples and analogies I give are just to help illustrate points. A lot of people have read too much into them, and that's not my intention.

Also, I don't mean to disparage any particular game, or style of games. My goal is to show that video games are a very unique medium for presenting narrative, and so far we have mainly just tried to emulate cinema. There's a lot of experimentation out there, and still more that needs to be done, before we can say we've really understood the medium.

Re: Designing game narrative

#27
post #15
post #14

Books have more senses than movies and games, because in books, you can describe touch feelings, smells, temperatures, etc., thus giving readers a multisensorial experience. In movies you can only rely on sound and image. Zero other senses. Smell in books is superior to smell in movies.

I wouldn't say zero sense. When I watched sin city, I could smell the yellow guy. It all depends on how the story is presented. The color scheme of sin city definitely has sensory effect beyond what you can see.

great example! that's so true
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