2013 Retrospective:

The release of new consoles. The release of end-of-the-generation games that proved further that gaming has as much storytelling potential as most modern movies. And, further proof that farming out development and rushed releases from large publishers, to meet prime marketing zones, opens the door to potential release issues and failures - look at EA; this speaks for itself.

I don’t have too much opinion on the new consoles yet. I don’t have either and it is still too early to make a judgement call. What I would rather do is discuss the close of the last generation. The long lasting 360/PS3 generation is coming to a close and I’d like to look at one advancement that this generation improved a lot.

Storytelling.

One thing that I’ve always wanted in video games was for the storytelling to finally reach the same level as film. I love film and I love the amazing dialogue and storytelling that it can offer. However, it seemed that I either had to lower my standards or turn off my snobbiness in order to enjoy the banter and character arches in video game storytelling. In my opinion this is changing, and it took a large leap forward this generation.

Of course the origin of gaming was not founded in storytelling like film was. Storytelling in games came later in the formation of the media. When it did poke its ugly head out in early video gaming it was often clunky and/or incomprehensible. Clunky because it wasn’t a writer that was writing the dialogue and story, and incomprehensible because most of it was an abysmal translation of Japanese.

Many early video games skipped dialogue in favor of non-verbal communication of their story. The best example of this was Super Metroid. Aside from a quick intro, the remainder of the story was told though actions and sound effects. Although the story was not complicated at all, it was still impressive and emotionally impactful.

Once video games reached a point where they could more easily communicate a story, and comparisons to film became more common, I still always felt that the storytelling was still only as good as a middle-tier movie. In the past decade, video games have introduced some great premisses and even tried to tackle important, and insightful subject matter. Often falling short, video games needed a game to come along and tell a better than middle-tier movie story, have dialogue that even Quentin Tarantino could respect, and deliver on the gameplay and presentation (art style, cinematography, etc). In my opinion, there were a few games this generation that did just that. Some of these are Gone Home, The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, and others. The most striking to me was The Last of Us.

The Last of Us provided not only spot-on dialogue, but it also had an out-of-the-ordinary character arch (for video games) for its protagonists that left the audience (me) contemplating the story when the game was finished. I didn’t feel that it was weak at any point in the game either.

And for that final ingredient (good presentation), The Last of Us did deliver. The graphics were very impressive and showed that there still is little aesthetic purpose to move to the next generation consoles. Also, there were several cinematography and “filmish” situations that the game presents to you that were very impressive. One of these came during the Colorado State campus sequence and is a scene that could possibly only work in a video game because it relied on the manipulation of a gameplay element that you had grown accustom to up to that point.

Throughout the game, you have to lift Ellie up on to ledges. Each time this happens the same sequence of button presses and animation is used. The player grows used to pressing the correct button when prompted and seeing the same canned animation each time this happens. While the characters are making their way through the Colorado State campus, Ellie and Joel are having an argument about something terrible that had just happened. Joel makes a comment to Ellie to let it go. The next step in the game is to climb over a wall and requires the player to trigger one of these ledge-climbing sequences. The player is presented with the same button prompt, and the camera swings down to a eye-level angle pointed towards Joel as he takes his position to hoist Ellie up to the ledge. Normally Ellie comes into the scene from off-camera, but this time she does not. Joel begins the sequence looking down at his hands waiting for Ellie’s foot to step there. When she doesn’t, a new animation, different from what the player is expecting to see, begins and Joel slowly looks up and looks off-camera where it is assumed Ellie is standing. The camera lingers on Joel’s expression and frozen position just long enough that I understood that something was seriously wrong and this wasn’t your usual scene change.

The developers (Naughty Dog) did an amazing thing here to play with our expectation of a gameplay element to communicate an important turning point in the storytelling. Most people rightfully point out the more impactful moments in the game/storytelling like the intro, the Giraffe scene, and the last dialogue between Joel and Ellie. I agree that these are important and impactful, but I think that the sequence that I describe above is important because it could probably only be done in a video game. It is important to distinguish this discovery in storytelling methods that may be unique to video games.

I am anxious to see what other storytelling advances the industry makes in the coming generation, but I feel that we have seen some very good strides in the current.