How FPS Storylines Are Written 165
Might E. Mouse writes "Cynics might say 'Who needs a storyline for an FPS game?' and if we're talking Quake or Doom then fair enough. But to brand the entire genre as lacking in story is to condemn gems like Half-Life 2 or Chronicles of Riddick. So what goes into writing a really compelling storyline for an FPS game? bit-tech has an article exploring this topic with the likes of Martin Lancaster, writer / designer for Crysis, Rob Yescombe, writer of Haze and more: 'There's nothing wrong with that of course, back in the day Quake was amazing in its own, essentially plotless, right. But it's interesting that only recently has a push for coherently told storylines appeared among FPS fans, bought on by another few years of maturity in what is an undeniably young medium. Paintings and music have both been around since time out of mind, but computer games have only been around for a couple of decades and only recently have they begun to be recognized for the artistic merit posed by their interactivity.'"
Never been done (Score:5, Interesting)
I never liked Quake ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I love FPS games, but Quake and Quake II just seemed too pointless and lacking in any kind of reward.
Quake III Arena was much different because it was multi player and the point was more to compete and develop your "skills" (pardon the term, I just can't think of anything more appropriate) against other human players.
But Quake and Quake II had absolutely no rewards. The protagonist was not someone that you could relate to. The monsters seemed rather random. There was no hot chick waiting for you to save her at the end of the game. The game play didn't progress in any interesting fashion. Nothing really happened. It was just point, shoot, kill for absolutely no reason.
The graphics were better than Doom but I found Doom to be more fun. The levels were shorter, and I guess it was just new. With Quake/QuakeII it was like Doom but with better graphics and different weapons and aliens. Been there. Done that.
So yeah
Don't forget the Marathon series... (Score:5, Interesting)
Half life (Score:5, Interesting)
Another mod for HL1 was They Hunger, which had a pretty decent storyline, it had 3 installments and was a zombie based game. In all it had a good story to it.
So to sum up FPS games can have good story lines, but depending on what the game is a bout and when it is set matters and might limit what story can be conveyed.
Re:Never been done (Score:4, Interesting)
Butcher Bay and other underrated games (Score:4, Interesting)
Theif (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:System Shock 2 and the Thief series (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I never liked Quake ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Doom, Quake and later SeriousSam were all games with pretty much no important story but fun fun fun in multiplayer co-op.
I don't know if I'm alone in this thought, but for me it was much funner to play jDoom [doomsdayhq.com] in coop than Doom3 single. Simple graphics, simple levels and a whole lot of fun.
Re:Never been done (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Never been done (Score:2, Interesting)
Thief 1 and 2, and even 3 is decent, though not as good as the others. Extremely well-written fantasy, far better than most of the stuff that makes it to the fantasy section in the bookstores.
Defending Half Life (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Never been done (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine a game world styled like EvE, just as large, and just as expansive. Now smash together EvE and planetside. Space ships in space, marines on the ground and fighters and bombers in air and space. Now of course the game should start off structured. You want to be a marine, you join your respective factions AI or possibly human/employee/game master controlled military. Your opening story denotes a time of peace, and thus your initial job as a player is to do thinks like eliminate a pirate base inside your factions space. Now you could be the only player within your group of 20 marines, or you could be leading a fire team of 9 other players or 4 players and 5 ai marines. So you get your "briefing" from an Ai mission dispenser who is a superior officer.
So you and your buddies or your men or you by yourself go towards the mission. Well you can't attack a pirate base with just your transport, so you get matched up with either some Ai fighter pilots or a mixture of players and Ai. The problem is, the pirate base is in an asteroid belt that is about 4Au away from your assigned station. Well you need a ship with jump drives to get there so you and your fighters get loaded onto a small corvette that might have an AI crew with some humans, or it could just be a single Ai Captain with an Ai crew.
Then you attack your target and hopefully win, if you lead enough successful operations, the men below, above, and beside you could also note you for leadership, thus allowing you to move up in the ranks.
Say you don't want to be part of the military, say you want to be a miner or an explorer, you would start out in your respective structure and work you way up. Slowly as players moved up in the structure, you would allow them to take over things to an extent. You wouldn't give complete control over a factions military to a single player, though you could allow them into the very upper echelons of power. There will be people who stay within their factions structure, and those that abandon it for their own structure of choice, they could even make their own.
Slowly let the players take control, then after say 2 month of play just long enough to let people get into it introduce some chaos using your game masters (Think of them as a race of loki like aliens, make them killable too, cause frankly the hunting them would be neat), have a major NPC leader get assassinated by what looks like the other faction, put another NPC in or let a player take those reins, then let the war begin.
Do what you think you need to do to keep the game going, assassinate, impersonate, and manipulate.
Let the players write the story. It's rather interesting what happens sometimes.
Now if only computers could do this now..