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Forums - Gaming - Story in games: Is talk cheap?

Twilord on 03 December 2014
torok said:
Twilord said:

I am not denying it can be done alongside dialogue driven play. I'm raising the topic of that happening WITHOUT dialogue. Obviously Captain Toad isn't trying to win an award for being movie like, no one is saying The Last of Us isn't a great story-game, nor is anyone arguing that Captain Toad doesn't remain a gameplay driven puzzler. 

My question to you is, since you seem to dislike the example I picked because of the overly impressionist style (which is fine, to each their own), do you feel The Last of Us could have achieved the same story highs if designed from the ground up WITHOUT ANY DIALOGUE. 

 

That's a good question. We have a lot of examples (specially cinema and animation) of reaching high quality narratives without any dialogue. I think that it wouldn't work that well because it has a lot of subplots. When you want to pass a concept without words, the best thing is stick to a single, very, very strong idea and spend the entire game buiding it to a climax where you finnaly shows the full picture to the player and everything makes sense.


Very good points, which actually leads me back to why I think Captain Toad's story looks deceptively compelling for a game where story isn't presented as any big point.

 

You see Captain Toad seems to be showing the characters fear and its contrast with their dedication to protecting each other. It makes an effort to endear you to the characters by making you feel like you're protecting them while you guide them through stages, and after acheiving that it kidnaps your character and forces you to play as (and fall in love with) the other character to save them. By the end (in theory) you're back to saving Toadette and are playing as Toad again, but this time it should feel as personal to you as it seems to Toad from the get-go. 

 

Not to say I'm buying it for the plot, but I'm finding I'm curious about it from the perspective of someone who has studied media analysis and game-design.