What is the best way to convey story in video games?
By zanzibarbreeze 1 Comments
- In some ways, Metal Gear Solid 4 was the last straw for me when it comes to story in games. I can pinpoint exactly when I stopped caring about the story in the game. It was in the colnclusive cutscene of Act 3 - a half hour ordeal, five minutes of which consists of soldiers rolling up and readying their firearms, and another five minutes which consists of Big Mama deciding whether or not to throw herself to the fire. The scene was long - very long - but most insultingly, it was very overprotracted. The whole thing could have been condensed down to a seven or eight minute scene at most.
Compare the way the story is approached in Metal Gear Solid 4 to the way it is approached in Half-Life 2. In Half-Life 2, the player finds themselves active throughout the story. It's not just the fact that you can move around and have full control over Gordon during scenes containing speech with other characters. The success of Half-Life 2's management of story can be boiled down to the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the whole game is one massive cutscene. Never once are you pulled out of Gordon's shoes. As a player, I found the story in Half-Life 2 to be managable, unlike the way the story was approached in Metal Gear Solid 4. Half-Life 2 has you stop fighting for a amaximum of six or seven minutes at any one time; even less so in the subsequent episodes. Metal Gear Solid 4 holds you for cutscenes that sometimes reach feature length or television show broadcast length. That, and they use the word "system" or the phrase "the system" over two-hundred-and-ten times in the game.
Allow me to posit the following theory of the way story is managed in games. We can have "disconnect" story, where the player is removed from the game and the story and plays the role of the observer - games like Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid 4 - or we can have "connected" story where the story proceeds around the player, and the player finds that she or he has an active role in the way the story is told.
There are merits and pitfalls to both methods of execution. A "disconnected" story can be more flamboyant, and can have more atmosphere. Uncharted clearly follows this tact because it tries to replicate the feel or a blockbuster Hollywood film - an Indiana Jones, for example. But, as aforementioned, this has its downside, as it can alienate the player (see Metal Gear Solid 4).
The converse applies to the "connected" style of story in games. They are much more approachable and appealling, but can lack in atmosphere.
I would hope that we slowly see games moving in the direction of a "connected" story. But there's one major stepping stone blocking that from occuring, and that is the atmosphere, the design.
Take Valve, the developers of Half-Life 2. Valve is very, very good at what it does. It has good writers and brilliant animators. There's a reason why Alyx Vance is more or less universally lauded as the most realistic and most loved female character in all games made so far, and that's because Valve knows what it's doing. With the Half-Life series Valve made games taht every other developer of first-person shooters has been copying from, lifting from and emulating since. But the fact is that most developers just aren't as good as Valve.
The Darkness. Case in point. Starbreeze's XBOX360 and PlayStation 3 title is a competent first-person shooter. It's actually pretty good. It takes the best elements from Half-Life 2 and the Halo series and merges them together. What stands out is, of course, its "connected" style of story, without cutscenes, like Half-Life 2. Unfortunately it stands out for the wrong reasons. Facial animation and expression is poor. Lip syncing is unacceptably bad and, in some cases, non-existent (sometimes characters won't open their mouths at all). Voice acting varies in quality. This allserves to break the illusion of story, as it would in any game. But it's particularly bad in a first-person shooter, in a "connected" style story where you're looking directly into the eyes of a character who should be looking back at you.
This, then, is a major deal breaker for a "connected" story style.
But, slowly and surely, technology grows stronger and experience in designing games increases. One would hope (or at least I hope) that as time goes on the player will be further integrated into the way story is conveyed. It doesn't necessarily have to be about making choices. Sometimes, refusing to break from the game and the illusion of the game, like in Half-Life 2, can make all the difference.
I talk about this and other large scale issues related to video games on No Quarter, my weekly podcast. Each week a topic is picked and no quarter is given. Previous episodes include the failings of the Blu-Ray format and maturity in video games. You can subscribe to the show feed or download this week's episode about first-person shooters. As well as the way story is conveyed in games in the latest episode, I also suggest that the first two Metal Gear games should be remade as first-person shooterrs. A mere thought experiment, or a stroke of genius? I'd love to hear your comments about the show.