Tragedy in crpgs

[CorpseZeb]

If I may add another element of tragedy, rather unseen in the games - an irony. Is there a single game which has recreate feeling of irony (in the classic sense)? Game about hero, who is a good guy and doing good things but because all those good things, really bad things - must - happens to hero. In games, we have rather... a metaplot which is root all future event.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'd say Nier kind of fits that description.

 

[lophiaspis]

This is a ridiculous claim.

Really? How would you adapt, say, Schindler's list into a videogame? A strategy/business simulation where you survive by selling cigarettes to your fellow Auschwitz inmates? A puzzle adventure where you figure out the right combination of toilet paper and rubber chickens to escape the Ghetto? A stealth game where you dodge Nazi guards, like some Holocaust themed Frogger clone?

All of these might be fun games, but none would convey the spirit of the film. In fact, it's impossible to do so with any kind of traditional, gamey videogame. The only way it works is if you look beyond gameplay and build on the Heavy Rain/Walking Dead model. You would just put the player in the shoes of a character and let them do whatever comes naturally in their situation, without forcing them into any failstate-winstate gameplay loop. There are no gameplay loops in most narratives so why must they be shoehorned into narrative videogames?

Gameplay is a much too narrow subset of all possible interactions to base an interactive medium on. Of course, there CAN be gameplay, but only if it makes sense in the context of the story you're trying to tell/experience you're trying to convey.

I really can't think of any non-videogame fiction that would be adapted better by turning it into gameplay than by simply allowing the player to perform whatever interactions make sense. Feel free to challenge this claim!

 

[Kirtai]

I sometimes think that people have far too narrow a view of video games. When you look at just the spectrum of RPGs and adventure games, (hell, even visual novels), you can see there's a huge amount of untapped potential there for entirely new styles of game. But people try to shoehorn them into the categories they're comfortable with and reject the radically strange.

Video games are a very, very young medium and we're nowhere near knowing what can be done yet.

 

[Kron]

I'd say Amnesia The Dark Descent was pretty tragic. Not an RPG, but an adventure horror game. Still, the plot pretty much revolves around the haunting regret of monstrous deeds performed in the past.

Also how come no one mentioned The Void? The whole game permeates suffering, decay and torment.

 

[JarlFrank]

lophiaspis
Planescape Torment does a great job of using the fact it's a game in order to strengthen its story. It wouldn't be as good if it were a movie, or just some Heavy Rain-like interactive movie that isn't really a game. It lives from letting the player explore the world, letting him come to his own conclusions, and in the end, letting him choose how to end his story - by direct confrontation, or by dialogue.
None of PST's points would strike home as effectively if you were watching actors on the screen play out the story - much of it comes from you influencing your character's personality. Like in the famous scene when Ravel asks you what can change the nature of a man: there are many, many possible answers. You can choose any of them. None of them is wrong. That's because it's an entirely subjective question with an entirely subjective answer. How would you put that into a movie?

Or take the Thief games, where much of the background story is discovered by exploring the levels and finding private diaries, letters, or just bottles of ale hidden in a priest's bedroom. You can learn a lot about the characters by exploring the levels and finding readables, without meeting these characters head-on. How would you make Thief into a movie? You cannot.

The important thing with games is to make story and gameplay complement each other. Games like Thief and Deus Ex that focus heavily on exploration and discovering interesting bits of background story that might make pieces of the main story that would otherwise be left in the dark more understandable cannot be made into movies, because a lot of the storytelling depends on the gameplay.

 

[tuluse]

If I may add another element of tragedy, rather unseen in the games - an irony. Is there a single game which has recreate feeling of irony (in the classic sense)? Game about hero, who is a good guy and doing good things but because all those good things, really bad things - must - happens to hero. In games, we have rather... a metaplot which is root all future event.

Well there is the end of Fallout where you get kicked out of the Vault because you saved them.

 

[lophiaspis]

lophiaspis
Planescape Torment does a great job of using the fact it's a game in order to strengthen its story. It wouldn't be as good if it were a movie, or just some Heavy Rain-like interactive movie that isn't really a game. It lives from letting the player explore the world, letting him come to his own conclusions, and in the end, letting him choose how to end his story - by direct confrontation, or by dialogue.
None of PST's points would strike home as effectively if you were watching actors on the screen play out the story - much of it comes from you influencing your character's personality. Like in the famous scene when Ravel asks you what can change the nature of a man: there are many, many possible answers. You can choose any of them. None of them is wrong. That's because it's an entirely subjective question with an entirely subjective answer. How would you put that into a movie?

Or take the Thief games, where much of the background story is discovered by exploring the levels and finding private diaries, letters, or just bottles of ale hidden in a priest's bedroom. You can learn a lot about the characters by exploring the levels and finding readables, without meeting these characters head-on. How would you make Thief into a movie? You cannot.

The important thing with games is to make story and gameplay complement each other. Games like Thief and Deus Ex that focus heavily on exploration and discovering interesting bits of background story that might make pieces of the main story that would otherwise be left in the dark more understandable cannot be made into movies, because a lot of the storytelling depends on the gameplay.

All good points, except you miss my point. I believe interaction is essential to a videogame, but interaction does not have to mean gameplay. I define gameplay as a system of interaction that encourages the player to avoid the failstate and reach the winstate. Although many people consider gameplay and interaction to be one, I think it's valid to separate gameplay and interaction in this way, because you often see people complaining that something is 'not a game' if it lacks a failstate and winstate, even though interaction is clearly fundamental to the work (ie it's not a movie).

Take Proteus. It's clearly a videogame. It could never have been done in any other medium. Yet there is no failstate or winstate. You're not chasing EXP points or loot or clicking on enemies or jumping across platforms or solving puzzles. You just interact with this digital world and it reacts to you. It's pure immersion through non-gameplay interaction.

The cases you listed are all examples of what I would call non-gameplay interaction. The fact that there is no correct answer to Ravel's question is what keeps the sequence from being gameplay under my definition. If there was a correct answer, i.e. one that brought you closer to a gameplay goal, then the narrative impact would be cheapened (this is why Bioware morality sucks).

My vision is that narratives would be improved if designers thought more about what kind of interaction is appropriate instead of just stuffing the narrative into a gameplay loop.

 

[Ozma]

RPGs are a tragedy in themselves.

 

[Cassidy]

Really? How would you adapt, say, Schindler's list into a videogame?

Did you ever play a roguelike? Unreal World for example has a scenario where you start as a slave trying to escape in the middle of a freezing winter with almost no supplies. Or are you the kind of person that needs a stupid 10-minutes long cutscene with retarded Quick-Time Events to consider something that could have been created by gameplay instead tragic and immersive?

In properly designed CRPGs, permadeath alone already can set itself as tragic.

Joined:
Oct 24, 2012

Oh wait...

 

[JarlFrank]

My vision is that narratives would be improved if designers thought more about what kind of interaction is appropriate instead of just stuffing the narrative into a gameplay loop.

Well, I consider all kinds of interaction with the gameworld and its characters gameplay. Deciding whom to kill and whom not is gameplay. Exploring levels and finding secrets is gameplay. Making dialogue choices that can have different results is gameplay.

But even if you don't consider all this gameplay and just "interaction", the important point is that the player should have a relatively free decision over these interactions. No stupid cutscenes with occasional QTEs, that's not real interaction. Give the player the initiative. Let him do shit by himself, then show him the consequences of his actions, or reward him with additional story details (if he explores every nook and cranny of your levels, for example). This is the true strength of computer games as a narrative medium: the player is directly involved as a character and his actions can have an effect on the story. And you can write a complex story full of mysteries that are only revealed if the player puts an effort into revealing them himself - just following the quest compass and finishing the main story without any side exploration will never reveal the full story to you.

Linear storytelling without side trails is the wrong approach for stories in games. There always have to be some secrets, or some variations in story based on player choice.
And that is gameplay.

 

[Castanova]

It would take a better writer than most of those around in the business - but game studios are hiring dedicated writers now, so surely they could try and hire someone with actual taste rather than Hepler fantasy-fulfillment fan-fiction writers? Anyone who takes the 'formal route' into becoming a professional writer, and studies it at uni etc, should have learnt a variety of genres and be capable of taking tragedy archetypes while still giving the story a hero and the option of a 'good' ending.

Probably not going to happen for decades. Why would even a semi-talented writer with actual training get into the video game business? You could write a literary-quality tragedy and be given sole credit for it and, who knows, maybe win the Pulitzer or something... or you could contribute a literary-quality tragedy story to a game development studio where if you're lucky your name might be in the game's title and if you're unlucky the game will be total shit regardless of your story and then it was all just a giant waste of time.

Unfortunately, good game writers are most likely people who were in the industry already and they just happened to take on some writing responsibilities and it grew from there because they have some kind of natural affinity to it (not necessarily a good thing, could just be a natural affinity for writing shlock which stupid people like). This is basically how BioWare staffed their entire writing team. Wasn't that fat guy a janitor at some point or something like that?

 

[JarlFrank]

Probably not going to happen for decades. Why would even a semi-talented writer with actual training get into the video game business?

I would cause I love games and I think the medium can be used excellently for storytelling, and you can do things you can't do with "linear" media.

 

[Kirtai]

What's even worse is that while good writers are rare in gaming, good editors are non-existent. Didn't the T:ToN kickstarter mention having a professional editor as an unusual mark in their favour? Which is pretty sad when you think about it.

 

[kris]

The issue is not the PC being too stronk but simply that tragedies require well developed characters and the characters players build aren't well developed.

I think the bigger issue is that devs don't consider how mechanics affect narrative in a video game. If you do consider that, then you can construct any narrative you want. You don't have to define the character, because the player will define the character in their own head. You just need to give reasonable options and a smart player will accept them and follow along. Again, one of the biggest problems with Bioware games is that the options aren't reasonable. They're usually completely divorced from the game mechanics, and it makes no sense.

Can you elaborate? Bioware choices these days are divorced from the game in several ways - the availability of choices has little or nothing to do with your character's stats, skills or previous demeanor, their impact on the gameworld is purely scripted or negligible, and they have no long-term impact on the player character's standing in the world. As a result, they're basically aesthetic. I do think it would be cool if decisions had actual strategic significance, so you'd have to weigh doing the right thing against your party's wellbeing and your ability to successfully complete other tasks in the future.

That said, I don't see how that sort of thing would be a magic bullet in terms of personal narrative, which I think tragedy necessarily is. At the bare minimum, you can't have a tragedy unless you have a character who actually cares about something. And if the players are given free rein over who their characters are, then at any time they can basically decide, "oh, I don't think my character cares that everyone he ever knew was captured by nazi aliens and taken to their fascist sausage factories to be turned to mincemeat. I'm going to go do random subquests." Of course some people will go along with a narrative when they see it, but I think CRPGs players in specific are predisposed towards going the opposite way just to see what will happen. I know I do that a lot, even when it hurts my immershun and actual enjoyment of the game.

When it comes to choice and consequence in CRPGs, people generally measure its success by the impact the PC can have on the world, along the lines of how you can choose who is left in charge of Junktown in Fallout. The thing is, these choices don't actually impact your character as a person in any way (unless you're heavily into LARPing), and I know I personally didn't care very much, so in practice, the PC is left as this sociopathic, vaguely obsessive-compulsive superhuman cleptomaniac who arbitrarily chooses what happens to the places he visits while he's busy killing and stealing stuff. To get an actual personal narrative out of this, you need fixed characters with pre-scripted reactions that develop as the narrative progresses. That, or some kind of mechanic for character personality development, which is a programming and scripting nightmare and would almost inevitably end up laughably buggy or just plain silly. To do this well wouldn't be just hard, it would require some kind of fundamental design shift in a CRPG.

one of the big problems with far ranging consequences is that it is hard for a player even knowing about them. In fact multiple playthroughs mightbe needed to even know they exist. which means that either it needs to be obvious that it happened due to player action (at time of consequence) or narrative have to explain that it can happen before it happens. The second of these being better from a player perspective as his choice then will feel more important. This is also because to many cRPGs go from location to location without going back. If you go back to places then it is eaiser to show what actions might have changed and give those situations were a player choice might have bad consequences from himself or others.

ME and AP have both made the classic "choose between two companions" choice. I would change that, make the choice between your companion and [letting bad guy get away] or [what means their death gives you power] or [other people dies, which makes your surviving companion despice you and other people dislike you]. Normally this choice (as in ME) is pretty obvious and you as player won't care much, but when you enter in things as failed mission and NPCs disapproving then you get into the skin of the player.

 

[Chet Manly]

There was a quest in Oblivion - in Bravil if I remember - where you had to help a woman find her missing husband. It turned out his greed and gambliing got him involved in a deadly manhunt. It was like the movie Hard Target, if you've ever seen it. Tragic undertones everywhere. So much so that they were tragic overtones.

Back to that quest: You find her husband, but are unable to rescue him. He is killed by an evil Orc - a man not unlike Lance Henricksen's Emil in Hard Target. In the end you have to report the bad news to the gambler's wife: her husband is dead. She is pragmatic about the news, but one can't help feeling terrible for her loss. I had to take a break from playing. It was years ago, but I remember it well.

With good writing and strong characters, Tragedy is not so hard to come by in a crpg. This is just one example.

 

[Jokulmorder]

Same with Victor Frankenstein. Starts off as the classic renaissance man and hero. Does everything for all the right reasons, and defends his creation (who in the book is highly intelligent, literate and artistic) against the ignorant cruelty of the peasants and tries in vain to stop a bloodbath....

In the book, there are no peasants. Frankenstein abandoned his creation because he was terrified of its ugliness, and that decision led to the monster's lonliness and subsequent wrath.

I wish more games could give you opportunities to fuck up like that.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Probably not going to happen for decades. Why would even a semi-talented writer with actual training get into the video game business?

I would cause I love games and I think the medium can be used excellently for storytelling, and you can do things you can't do with "linear" media.

I agree. I think there's a lot of untapped potential for telling stories in video games. People are way too quick to sell the medium short in that department, but the level of interactivity that only video games can provide could be used for some pretty excellent stuff as far as storytelling is concerned.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I remember Prince of Qin having some similar moments.

You meet a blind woman whose husband died and she asks you to read his last letter. Then you can either lie or tell her the truth.
No happy resolution either way, but the game had the sense to reward you appropriately for either option, as in, wisdom boost for telling the truth or charisma boost for lying.

 

[JarlFrank]

a quest in Oblivion
good writing and strong characters

Oh wow, this has to be a troll.

 

[Krivol]

a quest in Oblivion
good writing and strong characters

Oh wow, this has to be a troll.

Joined:
Feb 23, 2013

 

[grotsnik]

It would take a better writer than most of those around in the business - but game studios are hiring dedicated writers now, so surely they could try and hire someone with actual taste rather than Hepler fantasy-fulfillment fan-fiction writers? Anyone who takes the 'formal route' into becoming a professional writer, and studies it at uni etc, should have learnt a variety of genres and be capable of taking tragedy archetypes while still giving the story a hero and the option of a 'good' ending.

Probably not going to happen for decades. Why would even a semi-talented writer with actual training get into the video game business? You could write a literary-quality tragedy and be given sole credit for it and, who knows, maybe win the Pulitzer or something... or you could contribute a literary-quality tragedy story to a game development studio where if you're lucky your name might be in the game's title and if you're unlucky the game will be total shit regardless of your story and then it was all just a giant waste of time.

I think it's important to bear in mind how absurdly over-subscribed and hyper-competitive the world of 'real' literature is, and therefore how utterly desperate writers tend to be. The figure usually thrown around for a first novel is £5000; very few authors can now sustain themselves on their writing alone (and there are only so many jobs in journalism or making money off people by teaching them how to write, sadly), and many 'literary' authors manage to shift only a hundred-odd copies of the work that took them a couple of years (which is itself a giant waste of time, in the practical sense). And while, sure, if you can guarantee that your book will win a Pullitzer, you're pretty much sorted, there are always going to be any number of extremely talented writers who simply won't luck into any kind of widespread recognition early enough in their careers to help them along. Or at all, in some cases.

And so plenty of talented writers, with training or without, have always ended up working in other creative industries to help sustain their genuine passion. Greene had his 'entertainment' novels; Faulkner went to Hollywood; Rushdie did advertising work; Koestler wrote a sex encyclopedia, etc, etc. I don't really see why that should be any different with the games industry - or if it is, it definitely won't be because scribblers have too much conviction in their own work and pride in their creative independence, but because the industry itself has such appallingly low expectations when it comes to writing and no real infrastructure or history of decent-quality authorship to help them appraise or, just as importantly, to manage that talent properly. To Bioware's existing writers, somebody who's published a generic comicbook about fighting supernatural monsters is probably going to seem like a more appropriate hiring choice than, I don't know, George Saunders (and given the demographic they're aiming at, it's probably the right decision). On the other hand, Jeffrey Yohalem's a Yale Lit graduate and presumably one of Azrael's more informed writers with a wider knowledge of art, but there doesn't seem to have been anyone else working with him on his latest game with enough editorial nous to point out that 'It's all ironic, uh, cos the Alice in Wonderland quotes were a clue, uh, critique of imperialism, uh, you're a gun, rape, it's trying to be a statement' is just muddled nonsense with too many themes rammed in to no coherent purpose.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

And so plenty of talented writers, with training or without, have always ended up working in other creative industries to help sustain their genuine passion.

Don't forget the MFA pyramid scheme, in which aspiring writers take out student loans in order to pay the salaries (and hopefully join) the literary farm team of talented (though rarely great) writers and poets who support themselves as professors of creative writing until they get their chance at the big leagues.

 

[Severian Silk]

Not an RPG, but Homeworld had a tragic element to it at the beginning. Coupled with the awesome music it was pretty effective.

 

[SCO]

I was reading this interview with the dude that did the dreamweb diary (and is a horror novelist)
http://retroactionmagazine.com/retroactionextra/stephen-marley-talks-martian-gothic/

Dude does the best part of dreamweb, works on warhammer dark omen, and the entirety of martian gothic

RA: Are you going to be involved in any future videogame endeavours?
SM: Since Creative Reality broke up and the main members are now employees of other companies, it’s all gone very quiet. I would love to be involved in video games again – I’ve got a whole bagful of game ideas. But, nobody’s even interested enough to look at them. Maybe it’s because everything is in-house these days – the freelance designer/scriptwriter is a dinosaur. Still, the future is yet to be written…