Advancement in technology is a wonderful thing. Just a decade ago I was singing the praises of the Digital Versatile Disc and yet there I was on Saturday night, G&T in hand and jaw on the floor, as Fight Club played out in HD glory on my PS3. It had been several years since I’d previously seen David Fincher’s brutal adaptation of Chuck Palahnuk’s novel, but, as clichéd as some may consider the fantasised Tyler Durden, it’s a wonderful yarn to weave. Full of anti-capitalist tendencies, a brow furrowing plot and the assertion that you and I are certainly not special.
And it got me thinking. How would such a story be played out through the medium of video games? Could such a tale be told without removing what made the original so compelling: the sleight of hand, the duplicity of a single character, the depiction of insomnia, the visceral nature of the violence. Contract the majority of studios to do a game adaptation and the most likely result would be a poor Streets of Rage homage lacking any of the film’s unique qualities. Given the anti-materialist tone of said film, I can’t see Tyler being happy with his story resulting in yet more mass produced crap.
Even away from the notorious domain of movie licenses, story driven games are tricky things. Cast you mind back through recent times and consider whether you have played a game with a storyline that could truly be considered good. Great, even. Great, that is, in the sphere of storytelling and not in just games. Far too many rely on derivative tales of revenge and bloodlust with little or no character progression or even consideration for story arc other than to move the player to the next exotic level. Halo, Modern Warfare, Gears of War; all massive selling franchises but with stories little better than a Michael Bay Victoria Secret’s commercial.
Taking Halo as an example, it may have a great deal of lore defined behind the scenes but this is ultimately just the building blocks from which the game’s universe is formed from. The adventures we actually embark upon with Master Chief are, when stripped down, little different to Mario’s original quest to find his Princess: one man striving to save something of value to him, running through mostly linear levels to be met with more supposition on their completion. For Master Chief this is a well lit cutscene depicting the latest twist in the war against the Covenant, whilst in Mario’s case it comes in the form of a Toad professing that he knows nothing of the princess’ whereabouts and suggests looking in another castle.
Although that may seem unfair to some, the story telling within ODST brings Halo 1-3’s (and most FPSs) into starker relief. There you find the same elements of a mystery, a love story and an adventure, but they are then backed up by a group of soldiers each with their own personalities and traits. Not only do they add more depth but these characters’ story arcs are shown through a series of flashbacks revealing that developers can attempt to express stories in less than conventional ways successfully.
However, the most successful story tellers of this generation to my mind are Bioshock and Portal.
Part of Bioshock’s accomplishment is down to the completeness at which Rapture has been realised, allowing anyone treading its subterranean hallways to be full immersed in its dark atmosphere. From the very beginning you are involved in a plot to bring down certain figureheads through a plot of deceit that has apparently been many, many years in the offing. But it’s not just that makes Bioshock standout as it is the amount of optional story that can be found through audio diaries that really starts building up certain characters.
Speaking at GDC, Bioshock’s Ken Levine detailed how their team build up characters ahead of time to make them feel more imposing, a more integral part of the world. Discussing the importance of using storytelling to make up for the deficiencies of game characters, “When we finally meet [deranged doctor] Steinman, he’s just an A.I. with a machine gun and a medical mask, but players have been set up to invest emotion in the guy. At the end of the day these digital actors are not Brando.”
Portal’s storytelling is also subtle. Although constructed like a common or garden puzzler with stark levels and a seemingly predictable path, it soon breaks off into something very surprising. With a homicidal computer attempting to control proceedings and the story of others played out through graffiti in hidden nooks, it has a tale to tell if people are willing to invest time in to seeking it out but equally does not burden those who just want to play with reams of text or cutscenes. A policy continued with the Left 4 Dead series.
No matter how much subtlety developer’s can include, the medium itself falls shy of the many expectations heaped upon it. Despite the progression in processors and the raw power available in comparison to at the start of the video game revolution, we still cannot hide that video games are not in the whole treading their own unique narrative path. Rather they are following in the footsteps of others, namely Hollywood.
Tomorrow we will look at what effect Hollywood has had on gaming and where videogame storytelling is heading.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife and rabbits fit in.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer
Bioshock is, I think, an epitome of the highs and lows of gaming story-telling. It’s narrative leading up to the denoument with Ryan tells a story of the FPS genre, after that though it becomes the very figure it mocks.
Ignoring the argument about procedural story-telling, I think that in the same way that you can see a video as a book with added pictures, games are in part video with added interactivity. Each of these steps changes what you can do and show with the story, but it doesn’t change the actual process of telling a story.
And to an extent I think that a story with the depth of Fight Club has already been told in games. Planescape: Torment is the tale of a man following his own footsteps as the game shows us examples of “What can change the nature of a man”. Significantly it’s told without voice-acting, with 100,000 lines of text it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. But the depth and subtlety of your interaction with the world can be remarkable. Another example is The Longest Journey, which finally so undercuts all your expectations as to still be worth playing now.
I think the answer as to why aren’t all games showing the same depth of story-telling as Planescape is the same answer as to why all films aren’t, too take a more recent example, Moon: Because it doesn’t sell.
After a certain point Bioshock does indeed become a shocking affair. I try not to think about the last portion as it tends to upset me.
Couldn’t agree with you more about the financial viability of exercises in storytelling but at least in cinema you do find that the studios do (to a limited degree, admittedly) fund smaller artier films with the revenues they’ve pulled in with blockbusters.
…I’m off to Steam to have a look at Longest Journey and Planescape.
Nick, I’ve found Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. And even a pack featuring them both. Which one in particular were you talking about?
I have that pack! Bought it for a fiver from Game a couple of years ago, it’s bloody ace, comes with a hardback art book and soundtrack CD.
The original is the better, in my opinion, although the follow-up certainly had its charm as well. The universe crafted in the first game still holds up now though, and especially dialogue etc. Superb.
Indeed, one of the first things I wrote on my old pre-7outof10 blog was this: http://www.7outof10.co.uk/the-longest-journey-retrospective/02/05/2009/
I’ve only played The Longest Journey, when it was released Dreamfall sounded a little too non-interactive for my liking and I’ve never found the time to go back and have a second look.
It is worth pointing out that while the story of The Longest Journey is indeed great, the puzzle aspect contains something of the most egregious examples of poor logic in the history of videogames. It also doesn’t anything in the same manner of a new style of story telling as Bioshock, but is an excellent example of mature writing in games. But Manuel’s retrospective tells you all that better than I could.
Regarding funding smaller, artier films; isn’t that pretty much what EA did last year with Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space? What I find quite interesting is that whereas indie film-makers make films with lovely, unusual storylines and cinematography, indie game-developers make games with lovely, unusual game mechanics and graphics. I can’t think of very many first-rate indie games which focus on the story.
By the way, Good Old Games has The Longest Journey for $10 which might be a little cheaper than Steam.