Everything is Possible - Storytelling in Games

Gamespot has a thoughtful and interesting piece up entitled Everything is Possible, where they interview several game designers with a strong storytelling background. The interviewees include Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment), Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear), Ken Levine (System Shock 2), Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango), and Ragnar Tørnquist (The Longest Journey). These gaming luminaries discuss the finer points of creating a plot in an interactive universe, and it makes for a fantastic read. From the article: "Ken Levine: I'll never forget the first story I wrote in gaming. It was for a (eventually canceled) Star Trek: Voyager game. I wrote the opening cutscene, which included this gem: THE CAMERA ZOOMS IN ON JANEWAY...WE SEE A LOOK OF TERROR IN HER EYES AS IT REFLECTS THE INCOMING MISSILE The lead programmer pretty much laughed in my face. First of all, our characters were low-resolution bitmaps, with one fixed expression on their face. Their eyes were maybe 4x4 pixels each. The camera zooming in on that wouldn't have shown a performance; they would have shown a scattered mess of random pixels."

Comments

Max Payne 2 - The Fall Of Max Payne

[Proud like a god]

I must say I've never played the original Max Payne, but the sequel was "A film noir love story" told via a brilliant combination of comic style screens and realtime sequences which added an extra depth to what is otherwise a shoot-em-up. Coupled with a great graphics and bullet-time engine it's one of my most rewarding games purchases to date.

Games are a young art form

[Master_T]

Games are a particularly young art form. The beginning of cinema was similar. There wasn't much meat to what they did. It was based in the amusement of seeing a moving picture.

It is the same with games. Only now are we starting to truly see games that seek to work as artistic and storytelling devices. Even now, much of them are weak and not strong in an artistic sense or in a sense of narrative. We have begun to see narrative gems like Xenosaga, FFVII, KOTOR, HL2 and others. Soon perhaps we'll see games develop a sense of aesthetic too(the way a sense of beauty is evoked. there are many different ones, they stem from a philosphy of creation) .

I personally believe that at some point games will become an artistic genre like unto cinema or even opera. With art-direction, carefully written plots, and quality music. Perhaps the way a game plays will eventually reinforce the message or story it puts forth. Won' that be interesting.

Re:Plot sells games.

[xgamer04]

I suppose I'll just mention that Final Fantasy VII had an amazing story and is probably why it was so well loved,

Stop, just STOP. The reason FF VII was/is "so well loved" is because it was one of those games where a new influx of console-owning sheep finds a halfway decent representation of a genre and proceeds to put it on a throne. Just look at Halo. I know people who love this game. When I complained about not being able to use a mouse/keyboard (in the Xbox version), they were like "WTF keyboards suck! That would be so dumb!".

Sure, it may be "well loved", but look at how many Deer Hunter games there are.