Gaming Narrative: The Good, the Bad and the Examples

I've touched on gaming narratives before on the forum (that's a lie; I've been banging on about them, but whatever) and I'm always interested in seeing just what other people think about the whole concept of story in gaming. What do you consider to be good and bad aspects of narrative, and I always love to consume more and more stories (seeing as that's the best way to learn) and so I'd love to hear what everyone else considers to be their favourite gaming narratives out there and why they consider them to be so good?

Independent games with narrative focuses are on the rise, and this is where I want to spend my time in the growing SA industry and so every little thing I can learn, and every piece of art I can consume adds to my reference repertoire (which is already large but could always be bigger).

Side Note:
One other thing that I just happened to be thinking of today was about visual novels. You get visual novels with choices (I think most of them have story-based choices), but there are those that don't and are really just static stories told through visuals... do you consider that to be a game? Because there's no skill or decision making involved, so would you call it a game, or would you just call it a pure literary story that happens to be told in a game engine rather than in a Word document (or something)?

Comments

  • this is quite a conundrum, narrative has many tiers, something that we need to always consider as creators of games. Simply outright stating my favourite narratives is something that i'll touch on further in this post.
    In indie development we are challenged mostly by cash and time, but we must always remember an immensely important factor: attention span. without the budgets for marketing or massive glistening graphics to catch eyes with what the general audience deem as 'acceptable', we need to sell our games fast, or we fail already. Thus sadly we often don't have a massive amount of time for narrative and depth in such department, gameplay and aesthetics are often how we make our games more memetic rather than the challenging idea of kids in the playground talking about mad plots and stories.
    What I am saying is narrative either needs to be a lot of the focus, to catch a viewer's ear, or disregard narrative and use narrative shorthand and tropes to quickly force an idea out.
    But if you want to make a good story over a massive gameplay focus that is A-OKAY. it's simply challenging. VNs are often such cases, and are most often where you'll see strong narrative focus in indie development.
    so what i mean by trope and narrative shorthand is the games often along the lines of 'beat dungeon because them goblins are ugly and stuff' or 'save the X by getting the Y(s)' or simply 'this is a thing that you do, so do it'.

    An exception to this, granted hardly counting as a small deal, i feel is 2014s Transister, which fused gameplay and storytelling gorgeously, with a compelling narrative to simply drive beside the player as they went. BUT also had a Souls (of the dark and demon's variety) aspect to it's world building that the world was as deep as the player wanted it to be, they could find the nuggets of more storytelling, or just listen to a storybook while playing a game that was inherently fun to play.

    I have a soft spot for the bioware style (previously the troika style) which is start writing about the story and detail and seemingly never think of stopping
    said worlds are deep beyond your own expectation and wondrous to explore, but also the work of unbelievable talent and huge amounts of fingers at work. And still, my favourite game ever is Arcanum, which is still to me, utter perfection... (look at them lovely words)
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  • @Steamhat
    this is quite a conundrum, narrative has many tiers, something that we need to always consider as creators of games.
    I don't think I'd quite call it a conundrum but it certainly is something that deserves more time and attention to think about than it has in the past. There are of course many different styles of narrative and so you can't just lump something into the category of "good narrative" (or at least you can't do so, in my opinion, without actually stating reasons for this). People don't usually have a single uniform taste when it comes to stories, and so there are stories of many varieties that could appeal to the exact same person (for instance I am pretty much in love with any kind of story, as a writer, so long as it's pulled off correctly. Even a romantic comedy can be done right).
    What I am saying is narrative either needs to be a lot of the focus, to catch a viewer's ear, or disregard narrative and use narrative shorthand and tropes to quickly force an idea out.
    This is something that I completely agree with; there are games that would be damaged by having a tighter narrative focus. I believe that if you want to build a narrative game then you should start with the narrative rather than with the gameplay because a story-driven game may just have awesome gameplay, but that isn't necessarily why you play. I don't think that people play visual novels for a riveting gameplay experience; they play it for the story.
    But if you want to make a good story over a massive gameplay focus that is A-OKAY. it's simply challenging. VNs are often such cases, and are most often where you'll see strong narrative focus in indie development.
    I think it may be more challenging for most people, but I feel that the flip side is my issue. I can write a story (hopefully a good one) for a game, but when it comes to making good gameplay I feel that I'm at a disadvantage. My skillset just flips that whole concept of writing a gaming narrative being difficult on its head.

    The biggest issue here, I find, is that a marriage between gameplay and narrative is what is actually necessary, and that's the thing that's actually difficult. You can write a good story, you can create good gameplay, you can have a gorgeous art style and you can have phenomenal music and sound design... but it's all about combining these things, and that's why I think making games alone is really hard, ha ha.
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  • I'd say I'd consider Starcontrol 2 to be one of the best game narrative's ever told. It's from 1992, so it's really old and a lot about the game feels clunky by today's standards.

    But it did so many impressive things, like having a universe that didn't wait for the player, that some of the greatest drama's in the story were playing out on their own timeframes, and the player was just one of the actors involved. There are very few games that even try to achieve this.

    The writing was quite strong as well, but it's the sheer number of ideas that got crammed into that one game that make it stand out for me head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

    They did a post mortem on developing the game at this year's GDC: http://gdcvault.com/play/1021863/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Star

    (Star Control 2 was very influential for the Mass Effect series. Though I feel that for all the things that Mass Effect improved upon the very old game of Star Control 2, there are a lot of great things that didn't make it into Mass Effect)

    A game that stands out for me as doing narrative bad is Prototype. It epitomizes for me ludo-narrative dissonance, in that the character they try imbue the protagonist with is entirely at odd with the action of the game. It's almost so bad as to be funny, except it takes itself so so seriously as to rob the player even of that pleasure.

    I think Zero Punctuation talked a bit about the terrible narrative in Prototype:
  • @BlackShipsFilltheSky
    I'd say I'd consider Starcontrol 2 to be one of the best game narrative's ever told. It's from 1992, so it's really old and a lot about the game feels clunky by today's standards.
    Older games are often a lot harder to actually play nowadays because of compatibility issues; do you happen to know whether I could get this game to work on a modern PC? I have vaguely heard of it but I've always liked the idea of a world that moves without you; one in which you're not the hero.
    A game that stands out for me as doing narrative bad is Prototype. It epitomizes for me ludo-narrative dissonance, in that the character they try imbue the protagonist with is entirely at odd with the action of the game. It's almost so bad as to be funny, except it takes itself so so seriously as to rob the player even of that pleasure.
    This was something I felt completely. The game itself was... fine. But the story was so jarring because they tried to paint the protagonist as a tormented anti-hero, as if he wasn't really such a bad guy and then you go out and kill four thousand civilians just because. But this is often a problem, I feel, in games with the whole good/evil morality thing. The protagonist has to be bland in the story so as to compensate for choices that the player makes. It's one of the reasons I don't like the mechanic where you're either Jesus or you're Satan. There has to be an in-between, which is what I think Fallout does really well with the morality mechanic.
    I think Zero Punctuation talked a bit about the terrible narrative in Prototype:
    The very fact that you even mentioned anything created by Yahtzee makes me happy. As a side note, have you by chance played any of his games? Or do you only know about him because of Zero Punctuation?
  • edited
    They did a post mortem on developing the game at this year's GDC: http://gdcvault.com/play/1021863/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Star
    Yes! Best postmortem ever :D (Also: 51:15, represent!)
    LC_Lupus said:
    Older games are often a lot harder to actually play nowadays because of compatibility issues; do you happen to know whether I could get this game to work on a modern PC? I have vaguely heard of it but I've always liked the idea of a world that moves without you; one in which you're not the hero.
    Open Source, free, works on modern PCs: http://sc2.sourceforge.net

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  • @LC_Lupus I enjoyed that Love Craftian/apocolyptic detective game/prototype Yahtzee produced. I do know him through his game reviews, but I check up on his games now and then.

    I haven't played the open source Starcontrol 2 myself (though from what I understand it is sanctioned and even contributed to by the original creators). I think if you try it now you'll probably get an idea of how brilliant it was back in its day (and be able to see the brilliant bits that remain brilliant). But I wouldn't expect you to have the patience to finish it. It's got 1992 levels of expectations of patience.
  • @BlackShipsFilltheSky
    I enjoyed that Love Craftian/apocolyptic detective game/prototype Yahtzee produced. I do know him through his game reviews, but I check up on his games now and then.
    Hmm. I think you may be referencing his latest game The Consuming Shadow, which I sadly haven't gotten around to yet. Was it a roguelike that you played, just for interest sake, because then I think it is that game (which I believe he's planning on putting on Steam when he finishes it). I would recommend a couple of his other games though, namely his Chzo Mythos series:

    5 Days a Stranger (http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/) is the first of the Chzo Mythos series... which may be my favourite series of indie games ever created (possibly). Check it out if you like horror-themed, story-centric, point-and-click adventure games in the old school vein of LucasArts. Although I did encounter compatibility issues when trying to play them recently on a modern system.
    I haven't played the open source Starcontrol 2 myself (though from what I understand it is sanctioned and even contributed to by the original creators). I think if you try it now you'll probably get an idea of how brilliant it was back in its day (and be able to see the brilliant bits that remain brilliant). But I wouldn't expect you to have the patience to finish it. It's got 1992 levels of expectations of patience.
    There's no need to worry about me and old games. I love the older games and I always try to play them as if I was playing them back then; I'm the same with old books and movies. I will definitely check it out, although I may have to wait a while seeing as my shoddy internet connection kept failing on me while trying to download during the installation process... so I'll get to it when technology decides to be nice to me, ha ha.
  • Final Fantasy VI was a fantastic blend of "story" and narrative - each character has powers and abilities that speak to their past, and the abilities are utilised in different ways, for example (minor spoiler), one of the characters was raised in the wild (like Mowgli of Jungle Book) and his ability is to mimic monster attacks - and he can learn more attacks by fighting them in the wild.

    But when I bought it for PS3 on the PSN, I played 10 minutes before realising I really, really couldn't stand playing through its archaic systems anymore. Random encounters, slow as hell, long delay going in/out of combat, etc... The pacing really killed it for me.
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  • @Tuism
    Final Fantasy VI was a fantastic blend of "story" and narrative - each character has powers and abilities that speak to their past, and the abilities are utilised in different ways, for example (minor spoiler), one of the characters was raised in the wild (like Mowgli of Jungle Book) and his ability is to mimic monster attacks - and he can learn more attacks by fighting them in the wild.
    I'm still rather depressed over the fact that I've hardly played any Final Fantasy games, but I agree that those different characters using different abilities based on their past is a very clever idea. I'm also not too sure I've seen it before. So that is pretty interesting.
    But when I bought it for PS3 on the PSN, I played 10 minutes before realising I really, really couldn't stand playing through its archaic systems anymore. Random encounters, slow as hell, long delay going in/out of combat, etc... The pacing really killed it for me.
    I may be quite lucky then, ha ha. I can handle archaic systems so long as the overarching narrative is good. Apparently I'm one of the only people my age that can play the original Deus Ex without giving up because of the visuals that hurt your eyes and the old systems that are hard to get used to and the weird glitches that enjoy cropping up... everyone I've tried to get to play it can't handle it (although that moronic tranquilizer dart manages to get to me too, but that thing's not archaic, it's just stupidly designed).
  • Many games nowadays have more mature themes but most don't ever really explore them as concepts. A couple exceptions being things like Spec Ops: The Line, Bioshock (both one and Infinite, and both for different reasons), and The Last of Us, but one area that I feel is seen so often but is even more often utterly neglected in any meaningful way is romance. The typical game romance is garbage and usually entails the guy kissing the girl right at the end. Which is about as mature and complex as a Disney movie. What are your thoughts on romance-based story telling in gaming?

    Catherine was an interesting game but was mostly about infidelity rather than romance, and The Darkness (that's the first one not the cel-shaded sequel) had one of the few realistic relationships I've seen in a game (you know, between all the heart eating and the dissections and stuff), and of course Christine Love's work. But other than these I don't really see anything meaningful being done with romance, and romance (while not a topic I explore often) is something I found interesting for exploring narratives.

    I recently decided to try out one of those dating sims, but it was so unrealistic in its depiction of romance and it was also just badly written; anyone got any suggestions for games that show proper romance?

    For those who want very interesting narratives surrounding love and sexuality I'd recommend Christine Love's work (I mentioned her earlier), and two of her games can be downloaded free (her other one is Analogue: A Hate Story, which is on Steam):

    Digital: A Love Story (http://scoutshonour.com/digital/) is an interesting one about an online romance of sorts. Very unusual in its subject matter as well as execution.

    don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story (http://scoutshonour.com/donttakeitpersonallybabeitjustaintyourstory/) is also an interesting one in how it deals with sexuality as well as the concept of privacy in the modern (and not-so-distant future) age.

    These two games are visual novels though... so they don't exactly engage through gameplay, and it's through text that they tell their stories.
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