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Sam Lake on Video Game Storytelling
loladeutsch writes "What makes for a great story in a video game? Sometimes, with all the innovative development and cool graphics the actual story a game has to tell can get lost in the shuffle, or at least can seem to be an afterthought. When a game arrives on the shelves that presents one of the more engrossing stories we've seen in awhile, it's worth noting. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has been recognized by many people with their heads screwed on straight as a benchmark in video-game storytelling. "
I see the problem with video game stories as a systemic one, and Sam Lake touches on this when he identifies novels as a singular effort, and video games as a team effort. When you have a bunch of people with different backgrounds working on a project, quite a bit of infighting can occur. Plus there is the aspects of how stories affect the gameplay, and the scaling of the combat in games. The story may call for particular systems to be in place that are impossible, so it is critical for authors to fully understand the game design process to interpret these events into a literary context.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
games like Tomb Raider held my attention much longer than some basic arcade style game. In fact, that's what made consoles diff from the arcades back in the day, a multi-level story, not some 2d game that offers no change upon repeated plays.
super mario? thanks, but our princess is in another castle! ARRRGGG!
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In A.D. 2101
....
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
spoken in the Flash animation as Someone set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Operator: Captain !!*
Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'Zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
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IAALS.
Since when did a good game need one of those? Back in the good old days, all we had were little pixels that roamed the screen, and if they actually did something, we were amazed. Story, heh. Those young'ens today are spoiled, I tell ya.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
...Grand Theft Auto: Vice City doesn't qualify as a good story? Awww....
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
So long as it compliments gameplay. I love playing a game that I feel a part of, but at the same time, I'm not going to continue playing it just because of a cool story.
;)
One has to compliment the other, and I think most of us would prefer the games that are better to *play*, rather than those we feel a part of because of an excellent storyline.
I still play Quake 1
I think that the story is by far the most important thing in a game. I still go back and play games from '99 and before and enjoy them alot. I play the half-life single player at least once a year. Also I just recently played the first Home-world and it was the story that kept me so rivited to it. So what if the graphics aren't top notch, people are not going to pay 50 dollars for their hard earned cash for nothing more then an interactive tech demo. I also just found Multi User Dungeons online, such as nannymud, its all text, but the stoies in these gamaes are deeper then morst comercial games right now, and I'm am hooked on those.
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The article noted that the script to this installation of "Max Payne" is four times longer than a movie script.
Now, I haven't played the game, but if that means it's an eight-hour movie with a little "Okay, move from point A to point B now" thrown in.. no thanks.
I feel that way about some of the Final Fantasy games. I remember thinking "Wow... 90 minutes in... wonder when I'll, you know, fight a battle."
That stuff was great when I was 14 and on summer vacation. At 25, I want something I can *play* in 2 hours.. not "get all set up to start playing."
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Max Payne 2's storyline was pretty good, but it got downright pretentious at moments, trying for an emotional depth that the characters just didn't deserve. And you can forget about subtlety.
No, the best storyline I've ever seen in a game is the Marathon series from Bungie. They've been out for over 9 years, and people are still discovering new depths to the story after all this time.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Well, it depends on the genre, but Japanese games usually have much more involving stories (in terms of identifiable plot-points & a sense of evolution/progression) than American ones. Then again, one could argue that many such storylines are too linear and don't give the player enough choices. But more and more Japanese games are providing multiple endings & etc... Overall it looks like a good trend for the industry to follow.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Actually, for me, the benchmark in video-game storytelling is Leisure Suit Larry, from Sierra On Line. That d00d is my hero.
I think the greatest video story ever told was that of the lonely hungry yellow orb with eyeballs. Always running from his past, devouring the needed fuel to keep him going and learning life as he traveled the mazes of unpredictability. Chased by the undead that could never understand his ideology nor motives only to cause this lost soul to consume a secret drug like substance that multiplied his anger and made him insanely aggressive for short uncontrollable periods of time. It is a story of a journey that will never subside and never end.
Oh, and he liked to eat fruit.
On the other hand you have games like Morrowind. Great sense of freedom and that contributed to the quality of it's gameplay. As a side-effect, the storyline was easily mangled, and you could break the main quests by doing things out of order, going to where you shouldn't be too early, etc...
Until we reach a point where the hardware is powerful enough that programmers can create an adaptive enough AI, Storyline will just be a euphemism for 'railroading'.
, Grim Fandango, damn am I spotting a trend here?
Should it be so suprising that pure action games generally have relatively weak story lines(with the exception of a few), whereas the more thought provoking ones(in terms of gameplay) tend to have a better plot?
No correlation to movies is there?
Gameplay at the moment tends to be driven by arcade desires, I sort of feel we are still in the transition from the stand up arcade machine instant gratification level of gaming to a more time consuming home leisure pursuit.
Hence I feel the storylines will slowly get better as developers learn more about what is possible for a succesful game for the home, giving alternatives to the wham, bam , thank you kind lady style of today, in favour of a slower pace, yet ultimately more rewarding experience. Which of course are far greater suited for plot and story telling.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the story to Metal Gear Solid is amazing. I dont know how they thought it up but it just blows you away. I know I was completley suprised when I finished the game for the first time. I would have to say the best plot/story in a game has to be MGS. The original, for the playstation, didn't have great graphics but who cares, the game was awesome and so wasn't the story. They eventually did a remake on Gamecube and others called Twin Snakes, same game, redone. Better graphics and still a great story. Anways, MGS originally was released 1998 and I havn't seen a game with that good of a story since then.
I likd Max Payne 2, it was a fun game and I do like the graphic novel approach but the dark noir dialogue is really pretty cheesy. Good thing they don't take themselves too seriously.
But for an excellent game with a story behind it how about one that begins:
I remember dying. Not how, when or why, but the cold fact alone: dying. I look around, there are dead bodies lying around. But they certainly don't seem to remember much. Come to think of it, the dead are not suppose to remember dying. Death is the ultimate, finale fate. How come, then, that I breath? How come I feel cold, and afraid, and disoriented? And what comes next? Death is supposed to be the end, no one trains you on "what to do" while you're at it. Maybe I should just lay still, maybe...
"Come on chief, get up, hurry!" It's an annoying voice, which startles me. More so, the fact that it comes from a floating, whirling skull doesn't help. "What?" and my own voice seems rasp, and strange to me. "What are you waiting for? get UP! we hafta get outta here!" again, the floating skull urges me to do something the dead are not supposed to do.
I comply, if for nothing else, because it makes as much sense as any other action. The dead, you know, are definitely not supposed to get up. "Boy, they sure tore you up good this time, you look even uglier than before" says the skull. They? this time? Before? Inside of me, ignorance and darkness are no longer fueling fear. There is another sentiment, a not so new one that grows within: rage.
It is right there, right then, in that dark, foul and creepy place, that I make a decision. I will do another thing that the dead are not supposed to: I will fight to remember my life.
I have two kids and work to contend with, so I rarely get a chance to play games these days. I often ignore story-based games for this reason: no time to finish the story. Zelda: The Wind Waker fell victim to this, Resident Evil, Prince of Persia...lots that are considered to be good by most people's standards (though I had other reasons for dumping Resident Evil too - let me know when they've got a reasonable save system and controls that don't involve walking into every wall, would you?).
But The Getaway passed the test with flying colours. A good plot, great soundtrack, good graphics and lots of tension. Can't knock it - I thoroughly recommend this game to anyone. Very much looking forward to The Getaway 2 which has been announced.
Cheers,
Ian
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...unfortunately, I'm not sure it was all positive. I'm quite certain that one of the hospital scenes in MP2 was the first time I thought to myself, "Enough of the fucking back story already. I want to play!"
The Max Payne team, and Sam Lake in particular, should be commended for bringing a level of depth to the story that most games in the genre have never even attempted. But there are a lot of people who believe that all that great story came at the price of disrupting the balance between exposition and gameplay. Plus, there are plenty of people who thought that the story just sucked.
On a side note: anyone else notice the resemblance between Max Payne story author Sam Lake, and Mr. Needs a Maalox himself?
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Man, I know that the web server takes a bad enough beating, but I never knew we could slashdot the mailserver also!
Deus Ex, absolutely. Deus Ex was one of those games I bought expecting a standard Unreal-tech shooter of the time.
Spoilers. It even started out boring. You're just an agent. The only hint of a unique focus on backstory is the conversation with the NSF leader in the statue, who rattles on with historical taxation statistics.
But once you finish the statue mission and enter UNATCO HQ, you start meeting the characters, start getting hints of something greater. By the time you're out of New York and Paul has turned to the side of the NSF, you've tapped into these greater realities woven into the game, and eventually you're flying to Hong Kong, infiltrating VersaLife, destroying a nanotech constructor, and so forth.
The game starts out as a standard "agent" game with some interesting takes on aiming and skill systems, and ends up as a vast conspiracy game with Illuminati, Knights Templar churches, and weird alien laboratories. Not to mention Area 51.
One of those games that "feels" completely different by the time you reach the end, like it's a whole new game instead of what it was when you bought it. I really enjoy games like that.
The storyline starts out simply enough: As one of the descendents of a lost human expedition, marooned on a distant planet for generations, your return home is a shock for both sides. Earth along with dozens of other planets has been enslaved by an advancing alien empire bent on galactic domination. They're clever, powerful, and allied with all the right (or wrong) folks.
Thrown into the mix is a third player, the subjugated workers of the master alien race, who spun off and are now committed to simple extermination. Their story is compelling, a tragic tale of conquest, psychic enslavement, triumph, and resolution: Races other than their own cannot be trusted, and must be 'cleansed'.
Some of the other races are positively fascinating, particularly the pyrophilic fungus with the capability to consciously modify its genetic makeup.
As the story progresses, you learn of the interdimensional meddlings of a mysterious race that has apparently had occasional contact with humans for thousands of years. They are aloof but benevolent, referring to themselves as being from "above", and warn you about dealing with the other interdimensionals from "below". But guess whose participation is necessary to win the game!
There are even occasional encounters with space probes, misprogrammed so that they identify every object as a potential source of raw material for replication. This includes you and your ship, so prepare to be broken down into your component elements. Combat is fast-paced and easy to learn, but every ship has its strengths and weaknesses.
The music in the game plays a part in making it so enjoyable, too. While most games of the time were using cheesy FM synthesized music with occasional wave effects, Star Control 2's soundtrack is 4-channel MOD files, written by a variety of composers from around the world. This bloated the game onto a massive 4 floppies, but anyone who's played it will tell you the few minutes spent copying the files to the hard drive was well worth the effort. Each race has its own music that comes up during a conversation, and the pieces are incredibly well chosen. Trusty allies sound noble, despicable foes sound menacing. The weird fungus music is eerie but pleasant to listen to, and downright funky in parts.
There are moments of hilarity, sex, confusion, negotiation, sympathy, and plenty of downright evil. All in all, Star Control 2 has far and away the most engaging and moving storyline of any game I've played. I think that might be because it was designed by two incredibly dedicated guys who wouldn't settle for anything less than excellence. When management wanted to release the game as a shootemup with a bit of storyline, Fred and Paul took an unauthorized jaunt to Alaska and returned with a nearly finished version of the game we now know and love.
The best part is that while the name "star control" is s
Let us not forget our roots; the battle of @ against &.
An epic story of the struggle between good and evil.
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Now, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any story in a game, far from it, I like stories in games, but the most memorable story is the one that you create by yourself while playing the game.
For example, in Deus Ex, which had its own great story, I created my own story by the way I played it. The first time I played through, I would knock out UNATCO agents, until it became more difficult and I started killing them. Then, in France, you actually meet the parents of a UNATCO agent, and the father gives you info you can use against them. If you keep bugging him he says something like: "I've helped you kill my own son, isn't that enough for you?" For the rest of that level I only used tranquilizer darts on the agents. Sometimes, I play through killing everybody, or only harming those who actually attack me.
This can be applied to other games in other ways, like when you grow attached to characters besides the main ones and use them all the time (RPG, strategy games), and even your style in a fighting game (say if you performed a particularly cool combo in a certain situation, or if you can use moves no one else does effectively). The more actions that a game allows you to use to overcome its obstacles, the more you can tell your own story in the game. Thus while there's a larger more linear story going one, you define your own little story by the way you play. The more (effective) actions you have at your disposal, the more "nuanced" the player-created "story" is.
Story is great, but great gameplay allows those who don't like the story (because it's bad or just not to their taste) to enjoy themselves anyway. Focussing on gameplay before story will still result in beter sales.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera