I think the first response to Richard's editorial is a must read for all interested in this topic as well, as it touches on the nature of game design and how game design can have a distinct impact on the way a story unfolds:
By Sean Riley on April 17, 2010 - 3:58am.
I think there's an element in your analysis that you're forgetting here -- how is the information given to the player? This is also a big part of storytelling, and it's a crucial element in games, where the delivery moreso than other media is more uncertain; audience controlled.
To my mind, Bioshock is a pretty poor example of good writing. Its story is told too often in clumsy fashion; use of audio diaries, ghost sequence flashbacks, etc. By contrast, I'd give Half-Life 2 much higher marks, where its storytelling does come in dialogue, true, but more often than not in the motion around you, broadcasts from Dr. Breen, etc. It's much more fluid and well controlled.
That said, neither would be in my top shelf marks for great game storytelling. Those three would be Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and Far Cry 2.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus both get the exact same thing right: The story is small, but delivered upfront and then told, endlessly, in the gameplay itself. Ico creates its premise swiftly: The story of two people, trapped in a castle, come to rely upon each other. Then the entire game devotes itself to reinforcing that idea; the usual lack of enemies (and that those enemies who do appear try to separate the two characters) and wide empty spaces, the way that the models are animated to emphasise their togetherness (notice the way save points work, with the characters waking up after having fallen asleep on each other's shoulders; or the way the girl looks at the boy's hand if her hand is held). Shadow of the Colossus creates its faustian bargain (Sixteen lives in exchange for one) and then depopulates its world into only those sixteen, makes those creatures beautiful, and visibly degrades its main character upon each death.
Far Cry 2 understands this model and subverts it slightly by only revealing its point in words halfway in. None the less, it's all told in the gameplay: Give you a clear objective, and then set none of your missions as leading you to completing it, while ramping up the game's brutality and violence in every possible fashion. The player comes to realise the story not through the cut-scenes (which are mostly red herrings) but in gameplay itself. Its Heart of Darkness inspired journey to the dark side is left entirely to the player to realise.
Neither of these have complex storylines, deeply realised characters or plotting twists of the games you praise above, but they resonate thematically, and the more and more I think about it, the more I think this is what games do well. I think we need to think about what good storytelling is in games, because I think it's going to wind up being wholly different to any other medium.
ps. Aquaria, which I have not played, sounds very much like what I would admire. The Path almost got there, but I think the game designers meager programming skills actually got in the way -- The flat forest floor and awkward controls destroyed what would have been an exceptionally powerful theme the game strove to develop: The joy of disobedience.
