Storytelling in Games: Part 2

[VentilatorOfDoom]

<p>IGN offer <a href="http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/116/1165886p1.html" target="_blank">Part II of "Storytelling in Games"</a>, this time focusing on players & challenges.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>CD Projekt - Tomasz Gop, Senior Producer:</strong>

I'd say it's always like that: you invent the story and wish you could tell it to players your own favourite way. Then you start focus tests, people play it and all sorts of misunderstandings come from that. Then you force yourself not to think about that in terms of bugs or misuse. If you do it right, you adjust the story so that it suits more players, a wider audience. That is a challenge. At least for a pure-blooded Designer it is.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>BioWare - Casey Hudson, Executive Producer:</strong>

One principle that drives the evolution of our games is that in an interactive medium, every part of the experience should be interactive. Obviously that includes the story, and yet many games have a story that is completely non-interactive. You play the entire length of the game without being able to change or influence the events or the outcome of the story. To give players the freedom to shape the story, however, leads to some of the biggest challenges in game design. It requires the designers and writers to literally write a multidimensional story, considering the experience of multiple versions of the story arc as they develop each plot.</p>
</blockquote>

 

[Havoc]

"You play the entire length of the game without being able to change or influence the events or the outcome of the story."

Dragon Age 2.

 

[BlaineMono]

First guy is giving his job description.

Second guy is bullshitting.

Also, unquoted, lots of guys rephrasing the same obivious boring answer.

At least the bioware fuck is entertaining.

 

[Coyote]

It requires the designers and writers to literally write a multidimensional story

?

 

[CraigCWB]

Dunno why Bioware is so hung up on making the story interactive. It's the games that are by necessity interactive. Seems like their obsession with having the storytelling driving the action rather than residing in the background waiting for the player to make discoveries, they'd be better off just having the story set in stone because they are never going to be willing to pay enough artists and actors to provide the content that'd be required for any kind of meaningful and long lasting divergence from "default" story. They need to just get honest and admit they aren't big on the idea that the player should have free will.

Somebody asked me in the other "storytelling" thread if it was really so different in the old days. That's pretty subjective I guess, since everyone has their own level of tolerance for being led around by the game vs exploring what the game has to offer on their own. For example, Ultima VII and Wizardry VII are two games that I'd say were just as story-heavy as games today are. I never felt like I was being dictated to about what I had to do and when I had to do it in either of those titles. I felt like I was making discoveries, and exploring the game world.