| Email: Epic Mickey, Spector, and Storytelling
Hi Sean, I thought you might be interested by this video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNNjfo0Se40 Actually, I’m a little concerned. Of course Spector says that a storytelling game is not about a director shoving a scenario down your throat (as your developer drift from games to movies explains) but about giving situations in which you interact, but still, I’m afraid he and his team did this wrong anyway. I guess we have to wait and see… A French long time reader I can understand. When a game maker keeps talking about story, I get scared. Spector saying the concept of the game was pitched from Disney executives is worrying. What do executive dorks know about video games? There is actually some people from Junction Point who do (or have) read this website. And since I so much try to ‘reverse engineer’ the consumer experience, let me point to a familiar game (to Spector) that successfully ‘told a story’ while the player didn’t feel ‘constrained’: the original Wing Commander. When I look back at it, the original Wing Commander really was a masterpiece. For those who didn’t experience it, Wing Commander was space shooter dogfight game set in a war of Humans against alien cat creatures called the Kilirathi. You were on the space equivalent of an ‘aircraft carrier’. You played the role of a rookie pilot when you start the game. Wing Commander famously evolved (or rather de-evolved) into more and more of a movie until literally becoming a movie. But there is an important difference. While actors were brought in with Wing Commander III and IV, Wing Commander II first had a ‘set’ story line. What I see no one mention or remember is that Wing Commander I had a branching storyline though you didn’t realize it when playing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPJ-TQc4X84 Above: A fantastic quick look at the Wing Commander series and a very good illustration of the brilliance of Wing Commander I and how the series evolved (or rather de-evolved). Wing Commander is THE game that shifted games from being designer based to production based. The designer of Starcraft 2 said they were trying to mimic Wing Commander in the ‘in-between’ missions. To this end, they failed. Aside from the incredible graphics, music, and sound (voice acting!) that Wing Commander heralded, let me try to describe the experience. While in between missions, you could famously go to the bar, go to your bunk, look in your locker, play the arcade machine, talk to pilots at the bar, what was compelling was the missions themselves. Once you left the ship, everything was in your control. While each mission had you set to from Nav 1, to Nav 2, and so on when you pressed autopilot, you could change the order. You could go to Nav 3 first if you wanted. This was often a good idea if you wished to avoid mines and asteroids. Here’s the rub: the game’s “story” would change depending on what you did with the mission. If you lost your wingman, he or she would be written out entirely. With Maniac, that punk pissed me off because he wouldn’t obey my orders so I shot him down myself. But if something happened like you ejected (right before your ship blew up), it was not a ‘game over’. The STORY went on despite you failing in your mission. What would happen is that the storyline slanted more and more towards the Terrans losing the war. The worse you did in your play, the more the Terrans would lose. The better you did, the more the Kilirathi would lose. When you look at something like Starcraft 2, the missions are completely either ‘you win or lose’. If you lose during the mission, the game and the story should still go on. It would have been very interesting if this occurred and made you feel that you were actually in control of events. I have yet to see a video game ever do anything remotely like this with a story. Many games have ‘multiple endings’, but nothing like you getting a ‘game over’ yet the game keeps going on. RPG games did this in part with you being resurrected by the king or something. (and losing half your gold). Story in video games is all about repercussions. If the player’s actions do not show repercussions in the storyline, the player feels cheated. If I kill Lord British instead of praising him, I expect people to react to it. (And some of Ultima’s party members do. But more reaction would have been the thing.) It is always annoying in a RPG to save a town and there was no repercussion from it. No change in the game world. Another game that successfully does storytelling very well is Star Control 2. After playing through it a gazillion times, you realize the story has only a couple destinations and major changes are due to ‘triggers’ of your actions. But you do not know this when playing. The alien races do not go to you, you come to them. You talk to them when you choose to. You return back to them when you choose to. And the story ‘works’ because the player’s events cause large scale repercussions throughout the game. You play a radio at a certain signal and the Ilwrath believe you are their gods. So you can tell the Ilwrath what to do such as attack an alien race and even give them a silly new name (the dilrats). Next thing you know, the race is careening through the galaxy to go to war at that race, and they introduce you as the dilrats. Unless the player can create repercussions in the story, any video game story will feel ‘tacked on’. The most important part of a video game is the human who is playing it. Everything revolves around his actions. Even the story. One common mistake game makers do is that they present a ‘choice screen’. Starcraft 2 did this. This takes away from the experience. This is not how branching should be done. It should be done through the gameplay itself and the player should not realize it. All the player should realize is that his actions caused an event (like a wingman or an alien race dying). Good game design is to allow the player to feel selfish and believe the world REALLY DOES revolve around everything they do. |
For now it might be best if we just post one article of his per post. So my multiple postings after this are just to see if that helps anything with this thread.
A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.
Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs
