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Millennium said: If it's a game, then yes: all storytelling needs to be interactive. Otherwise, it's like trying to build a sculpture out of dried paint: sure, you can do it, but there's no point in it, and you gain nothing from having done so. You may as well have used the paint in a picture, or built the sculpture out of any of the materials more suited to that sort of thing. If a story is linear, then it will ultimately be better told using a non-interactive medium: that is the method which ultimately has the most to offer such stories. Just like interactive stories need games in order to function, so too do non-interactive stories suffer in a medium that requires interaction. |
I don't know about that. Games do not require stories, and therefore do not require interactive storytelling. If the story merely exists to provide context for the action, or to express a particular artistic point of view (I'm thinking SotC or Braid here), then there is nothing wrong with a linear story as long as it does not intrude upon the rest of the game. Why spend time and money on interactive storytelling if it ads nothing to the game? In any case, as I see it a story can both inspire new and exiting forms of gameplay as well as give a meaning to the game as a whole, whether it is interactive or not.
Of course, you are right in that if the game sets out primarily to tell a story, that story should be interactive or else it might as well be made in another, more suitable medium.
