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Sam Lake on Video Game Storytelling
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Apr 29, 2004 03:18 PM
from the something-to-think-about dept.
from the something-to-think-about dept.
loladeutsch writes "What makes for a great story in a video game? Sometimes, with all the innovative development and cool graphics the actual story a game has to tell can get lost in the shuffle, or at least can seem to be an afterthought. When a game arrives on the shelves that presents one of the more engrossing stories we've seen in awhile, it's worth noting. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has been recognized by many people with their heads screwed on straight as a benchmark in video-game storytelling. "
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Context (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Context (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Trolls (Score:3, Insightful)
I gave that an honest try, believe me. Even though it seemed little more than an attempt to suck unspecting web-surfers into 80+ minutes of oral wandering, I listened to most of it. And I think I've gleaned some good pointers on how to withhold information, while claiming to be providing it:
How to obfuscate the fact you have almost nothing to say:
Re:Context (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
halflife, final fantasy, doom... (Score:2, Funny)
The Curse of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the (Score:4, Insightful)
Should it be so suprising that pure action games generally have relatively weak story lines(with the exception of a few), whereas the more thought provoking ones(in terms of gameplay) tend to have a better plot?
No correlation to movies is there?
Gameplay at the moment tends to be driven by arcade desires, I sort of feel we are still in the transition from the stand up arcade machine instant gratification level of gaming to a more time consuming home leisure pursuit.
Hence I feel the storylines will slowly get better as developers learn more about what is possible for a succesful game for the home, giving alternatives to the wham, bam , thank you kind lady style of today, in favour of a slower pace, yet ultimately more rewarding experience. Which of course are far greater suited for plot and story telling.
Parent
agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
super mario? thanks, but our princess is in another castle! ARRRGGG!
PCB
An observation... (Score:2, Interesting)
We've come a long way from... (Score:3, Funny)
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
spoken in the Flash animation as Someone set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Operator: Captain !!*
Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'Zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
I play plenty of games with good stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Best storyline I've ever played goes to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoilers. It even started out boring. You're just an agent. The only hint of a unique focus on backstory is the conversation with the NSF leader in the statue, who rattles on with historical taxation statistics.
But once you finish the statue mission and enter UNATCO HQ, you start meeting the characters, start getting hints of something greater. By the time you're out of New York and Paul has turned to the side of the NSF, you've tapped into these greater realities woven into the game, and eventually you're flying to Hong Kong, infiltrating VersaLife, destroying a nanotech constructor, and so forth.
The game starts out as a standard "agent" game with some interesting takes on aiming and skill systems, and ends up as a vast conspiracy game with Illuminati, Knights Templar churches, and weird alien laboratories. Not to mention Area 51.
One of those games that "feels" completely different by the time you reach the end, like it's a whole new game instead of what it was when you bought it. I really enjoy games like that.
Parent
Re:I play plenty of games with good stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, what other games allow your character to completely forget his main quest and become a drug-addicted sex-fiend extortionist?
Parent
Re:I play plenty of games with good stories (Score:3, Funny)
Honestly, why look to games for great storytelling? You may as well proclaim
Integrating the narrative (Score:2, Insightful)
Story? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Story? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Story? (Score:2)
and back in the good old day, you were lucky if they threw rocks at you. most of the time it was manure, and you were being thrown into it! Ah, Soviet Russia... those were the days.
You mean... (Score:5, Funny)
great stories in a game (Score:2, Interesting)
"Deus Ex" (NOT #2)
"System Shock 2" (Discovering Dr. Polito still sends shivers)
any of the "Thief" series.
"Half Life"
Agreed, story telling is important.. (Score:5, Insightful)
One has to compliment the other, and I think most of us would prefer the games that are better to *play*, rather than those we feel a part of because of an excellent storyline.
I still play Quake 1
This couldn't be more right (Score:4, Interesting)
Excessive story can kill a game, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I haven't played the game, but if that means it's an eight-hour movie with a little "Okay, move from point A to point B now" thrown in.. no thanks.
I feel that way about some of the Final Fantasy games. I remember thinking "Wow... 90 minutes in... wonder when I'll, you know, fight a battle."
That stuff was great when I was 14 and on summer vacation. At 25, I want something I can *play* in 2 hours.. not "get all set up to start playing."
Re:Excessive story can kill a game, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excessive story can kill a game, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is off on a tangent but I also think ALL games should allow you to save at ANY time. Maybe they should allow you to save and only restore that save game once, but it really sucks when I am playing some game and have to go somewhere only to not be able to find a save point. Final Fantasy is one of the most irritating games in that regard.
Parent
Re:Excessive story can kill a game, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't. You're pre-judging.
A lot of narration happens as you're playing. It's neat and very noir. Go up to a locked door, and suddenly it narrates, "The door was locked when I tried it." It feels like you're playing a noir flashback.
At least check it out. I thought it was a neat and different game, and as an aside, the first game I played with a
Even better (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the best storyline I've ever seen in a game is the Marathon series from Bungie. They've been out for over 9 years, and people are still discovering [bungie.org] new depths to the story after all this time.
Re:Even better (Score:4, Interesting)
The concept was that you had just arrived on Earth to find everyone had disappeared. A single AI, designed for story-telling, remained online, but its memory had been damaged and it needed prodding to help reconstruct its understanding of events. The memery of the AI was divided into different sections, and by exploring around the sections, you would trigger blocked memories to be revealed.
There was no shooting, no zapping, no movement, actually. Just hopping from section to section, uncovering clues and having the AI synthesize them into story nuggets. Pretty cool actually. It was like finding an encycleopedia torn to shreds and reconstructing it into a categorical history of the Earth.
I've often wondered if there were any functional C64 ROMS out there of this game - it was unique, moody, creepy at times, and intellegent.
"A Mind Forever Voyaging" is another great example of fragmented storytelling -- look for it from Infocom.
Parent
Re:Even better (Score:5, Interesting)
I find there's considerably more depth to the story in Half-Life than most people realise at first. I'm gonna assume all of you have played it and I reveal the following spoilers:
At the time of the original accident that Gordon Freeman is present for, Black Mesa has had working teleporters for at least a few months and has been able to go to and from Xen for at least a week. They've captured and domesticated a good few indigenous life-forms - witness the Barnacle weapon and the ecosphere set up for some houndeyes in the Opposing Force expansion. Gradually they've captured more and more fauna until they "start getting collected themselves..." They get as far as Nihilanth's lair and manage to retrieve a mysterious orange crystal.
Yup. The crystal at the start of the game is the same as the three powering the final boss. Look and you will see a hole in the wall where the fourth crystal was stolen from. No wonder there was resonance cascade. The original accident causes a lot of random teleportations to and from Xen and brings over a whole lot of dangerous animals, but it's only about 12 hours of game time after the original experiment that stronger enemies - the green slaves, and the huge alien grunts - begin appearing spontaneously. This isn't accidental: this is enemy action by Nihilanth, who is moving to attack Earth... which is something the Administrator, who observes pretty much the whole course of events, has been expecting, indeed, preparing for. Read Alan Shepherd's diary and you know this was actually expected to happen.
Realising what has gone wrong the grunts are sent in, find it's too difficult a task to take on, are pulled out and replaced with black ops who attempt to nuke the place as a last resort. Shepherd stops the nuke and between them, he and Gordon Freeman block the alien invasion and kill Nihilanth, thus solving the problem in a different manner from what the G-man expected, but successfully.
When I figured all this out I was mightily impressed with Valve's storytelling abilities. The inattentive player would have missed a whole lot. I have high hopes for HL2, and I think I heard whispers of a movie of Half-Life...?
Parent
Re:Even better (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, a Half-Life movie would probably have a much thinner, dumber story than the video game does. And at least one guy outrunning an explosion while yelling "It's gonna blow!"
I remember the naive days of my youth, when I used to wish they'd make movies out of my favorite video games and comics, instead of wishing they wouldn't.
Charlie Sheen would make a great Gordon Freeman though.
MP2 the benchmark? (Score:3, Informative)
Japanese Games traditionally have good stories (Score:4, Interesting)
I got a better one. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, for me, the benchmark in video-game storytelling is Leisure Suit Larry, from Sierra On Line. That d00d is my hero.
Lost in Gameplay (Score:2, Insightful)
With Max Payne, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Only game where the story justified the gameplay was Half-Life, and I really can't think of any other videog that reaches its level.
The Archetypical Video Game Epic (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and he liked to eat fruit.
Storyline != Good Gameplay (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand you have games like Morrowind. Great sense of freedom and that contributed to the quality of it's gameplay. As a side-effect, the storyline was easily mangled, and you could break the main quests by doing things out of order, going to where you shouldn't be too early, etc...
Until we reach a point where the hardware is powerful enough that programmers can create an adaptive enough AI, Storyline will just be a euphemism for 'railroading'.
Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, there are a number of ways a good writer could dramatically improve the quality of numerous video games, and help improve various genres. Most publishers now take great delight in emphasizing the total lack of literature in their products.
If video games are to truly become meaningful, then they must convey meaning.
Re:Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a new field with no masters, but I I hope you're wrong. Consider the Kuleshov effect, described in Hamlet on the Holodeck, as follows:
I seem to recall one of the Mappl
It depends on the type of game (Score:2, Insightful)
Over time, we've seen genres of games which, if it weren't for the pretty graphics, there'd be no real reason to play them. Thankfully, it's a genre that has ma
Metal Gear Solid... (Score:4, Interesting)
Planescape: Torment (Score:5, Interesting)
But for an excellent game with a story behind it how about one that begins:
I remember dying. Not how, when or why, but the cold fact alone: dying. I look around, there are dead bodies lying around. But they certainly don't seem to remember much. Come to think of it, the dead are not suppose to remember dying. Death is the ultimate, finale fate. How come, then, that I breath? How come I feel cold, and afraid, and disoriented? And what comes next? Death is supposed to be the end, no one trains you on "what to do" while you're at it. Maybe I should just lay still, maybe...
"Come on chief, get up, hurry!" It's an annoying voice, which startles me. More so, the fact that it comes from a floating, whirling skull doesn't help. "What?" and my own voice seems rasp, and strange to me. "What are you waiting for? get UP! we hafta get outta here!" again, the floating skull urges me to do something the dead are not supposed to do.
I comply, if for nothing else, because it makes as much sense as any other action. The dead, you know, are definitely not supposed to get up. "Boy, they sure tore you up good this time, you look even uglier than before" says the skull. They? this time? Before? Inside of me, ignorance and darkness are no longer fueling fear. There is another sentiment, a not so new one that grows within: rage.
It is right there, right then, in that dark, foul and creepy place, that I make a decision. I will do another thing that the dead are not supposed to: I will fight to remember my life.
The Getaway (Score:4, Interesting)
I have two kids and work to contend with, so I rarely get a chance to play games these days. I often ignore story-based games for this reason: no time to finish the story. Zelda: The Wind Waker fell victim to this, Resident Evil, Prince of Persia...lots that are considered to be good by most people's standards (though I had other reasons for dumping Resident Evil too - let me know when they've got a reasonable save system and controls that don't involve walking into every wall, would you?).
But The Getaway passed the test with flying colours. A good plot, great soundtrack, good graphics and lots of tension. Can't knock it - I thoroughly recommend this game to anyone. Very much looking forward to The Getaway 2 which has been announced.
Cheers,
Ian
I tell you what doesn't.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything they should be going the other way!
Slashdot Jeopardy! (Score:5, Funny)
CowboyAlex: The answer is:
Geek: What are the two Stupidest Possible Things a web server can be programmed to do during a Slashdotting?
CowboyAlex: Correct for $100, go again, geek!
Max Payne 2 was a landmark in game storytelling... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Max Payne team, and Sam Lake in particular, should be commended for bringing a level of depth to the story that most games in the genre have never even attempted. But there are a lot of people who believe that all that great story came at the price of disrupting the balance between exposition and gameplay. Plus, there are plenty of people who thought that the story just sucked [penny-arcade.com].
On a side note: anyone else notice the resemblance between Max Payne story author Sam Lake [jivemagazine.com], and Mr. Needs a Maalox himself [rockstargames.com]?
Poor Technical staff... (Score:5, Funny)
There seems to have been a slight problem with the database.
Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.
An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.
We apologise for any inconvenience.
Poor tech staff. Let's see here, I've tried to reload the page three times, so that's four emails from me alone...multiply that by maybe 100,000 slashdot users...
Man, I know that the web server takes a bad enough beating, but I never knew we could slashdot the mailserver also!
Sojourn Development (Score:3, Informative)
How about designing a game instead of a story (Score:3, Insightful)
The storyline of now and forever... (Score:5, Informative)
The storyline starts out simply enough: As one of the descendents of a lost human expedition, marooned on a distant planet for generations, your return home is a shock for both sides. Earth along with dozens of other planets has been enslaved by an advancing alien empire bent on galactic domination. They're clever, powerful, and allied with all the right (or wrong) folks.
Thrown into the mix is a third player, the subjugated workers of the master alien race, who spun off and are now committed to simple extermination. Their story is compelling, a tragic tale of conquest, psychic enslavement, triumph, and resolution: Races other than their own cannot be trusted, and must be 'cleansed'.
Some of the other races are positively fascinating, particularly the pyrophilic fungus with the capability to consciously modify its genetic makeup.
As the story progresses, you learn of the interdimensional meddlings of a mysterious race that has apparently had occasional contact with humans for thousands of years. They are aloof but benevolent, referring to themselves as being from "above", and warn you about dealing with the other interdimensionals from "below". But guess whose participation is necessary to win the game!
There are even occasional encounters with space probes, misprogrammed so that they identify every object as a potential source of raw material for replication. This includes you and your ship, so prepare to be broken down into your component elements. Combat is fast-paced and easy to learn, but every ship has its strengths and weaknesses.
The music in the game plays a part in making it so enjoyable, too. While most games of the time were using cheesy FM synthesized music with occasional wave effects, Star Control 2's soundtrack is 4-channel MOD files, written by a variety of composers from around the world. This bloated the game onto a massive 4 floppies, but anyone who's played it will tell you the few minutes spent copying the files to the hard drive was well worth the effort. Each race has its own music that comes up during a conversation, and the pieces are incredibly well chosen. Trusty allies sound noble, despicable foes sound menacing. The weird fungus music is eerie but pleasant to listen to, and downright funky in parts.
There are moments of hilarity, sex, confusion, negotiation, sympathy, and plenty of downright evil. All in all, Star Control 2 has far and away the most engaging and moving storyline of any game I've played. I think that might be because it was designed by two incredibly dedicated guys who wouldn't settle for anything less than excellence. When management wanted to release the game as a shootemup with a bit of storyline, Fred and Paul took an unauthorized jaunt to Alaska and returned with a nearly finished version of the game we now know and love.
The best part is that while the name "star control" is s
Nethack (Score:4, Funny)
An epic story of the struggle between good and evil.
The best videogames let you tell your own story (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, in Deus Ex, which had its own great story, I created my own story by the way I played it. The first time I played through, I would knock out UNATCO agents, until it became more difficult and I started killing them. Then, in France, you actually meet the parents of a UNATCO agent, and the father gives you info you can use against them. If you keep bugging him he says something like: "I've helped you kill my own son, isn't that enough for you?" For the rest of that level I only used tranquilizer darts on the agents. Sometimes, I play through killing everybody, or only harming those who actually attack me.
This can be applied to other games in other ways, like when you grow attached to characters besides the main ones and use them all the time (RPG, strategy games), and even your style in a fighting game (say if you performed a particularly cool combo in a certain situation, or if you can use moves no one else does effectively). The more actions that a game allows you to use to overcome its obstacles, the more you can tell your own story in the game. Thus while there's a larger more linear story going one, you define your own little story by the way you play. The more (effective) actions you have at your disposal, the more "nuanced" the player-created "story" is.
Story is great, but great gameplay allows those who don't like the story (because it's bad or just not to their taste) to enjoy themselves anyway. Focussing on gameplay before story will still result in beter sales.