Ragnar Tornquist On Video Game Storytelling 137
Ragnar Tornquist is respected as one of the best storytellers in today's game industry. He's done work on Anarchy: Online, Dreamfall, and upcoming MMO The Secret World. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a lengthy three-part interview with Tornquist about how good stories are crafted, how they interact with other aspects of the games, and what his preferences are for building a compelling character.
"We had all these characters who were on a journey of faith, and we said how can we ensure that this theme is carried through, and have a clear view of how their journeys happen. So we said, every single major character had to fit into this model. Everybody starts out at the top. Faith can be anything — it can be religion, it can be a belief in yourself, in your abilities, in the work you do. As we face challenge, there's a process where we have loss of faith. It can be a minor thing: thinking one day, 'God, I suck at what I do. I can't do this.' And a lot of people after that point turn themselves around, face those problems, challenge them and they conquer them, and they say, 'Screw that, I am good at what I do.' I think most happy people live in this loop."
Compelling characters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dreamfall's three primary characters were a washed-up, gothy 'heroine' from the previous game, a generically plucky artist, and a generically honorable warrior who discovers that his government is corrupt. They inhabit a story that wanders at best, is never resolved in any way, and cuts off at not just one, but three separate cliffhangers.
Re:Compelling characters? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a saying where all stories ever written can be summed up as man versus man, man versus environment, or man versus himself. And while this is true, it doesn't make all stories worthless.
I personally enjoyed Anarchy Online's story quite a bit and found it a unique telling with much depth, mystery and imagination even though it was a "rehash."
Re:That reminds me... (Score:3, Insightful)
The kicks you get from good storytelling in an adventure game are very different indeed from those acquired while devising a backstory for your MMO character.
I love EVE and I love devising backstory for my character, but when you find the treasure of Big Whoop, all bets are off
Ach.
Re:Mixed feelings (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean Zoe, not Chloe.
Yeah, that's the one. Well, I said she failed to engage my interest. See? I didn't even remember her name right. ^_^;
Hey, Ragnar (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what's an important part of storytelling?
FINISHING THE FREAKING STORY
Like, when you've gotten through the backstory and the character development, and you get to the first big climax, the cliffhanger where you have the audience wondering which of their heroes will live and which will die?
That is NOT the right time to roll the credits. And if there are a half dozen important subplots that haven't even reached their climax yet? Then it is DEFINITELY NOT the right time to roll the credits.
Oh, who am I kidding. I could turn this rant into a treatise, but I know I'm still going to buy The Longest Journey 3 (or Dreamfall: Chapters, or whatever it gets called), even if it doesn't come out for another five years. And he knows people like me are still going to buy it, even if it's only sold for two hundred dollars with an uncrackable installer EULA which can only be accepted by submitting a video recording of the prospective customer saying "Please, Mr. Tornquist, I humbly beg for permission to play your sequel."
Re:That reminds me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Plenty of good video-game storytelling around (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been decent game stories around for years now - going back at least as far as Ultima IV. We've also been seeing them much more frequently recently. I must confess, though, I wouldn't have ranked this guy or the games he's put out right up there at the top of the list. As others have said, the Longest Journey was great, Dreamfell was weak and Anarchy Online... oh come on, is that really the best you can do? I'm not sure about individuals, but there are plenty of developers around in the industry who can do it better.
Bioware are obviously very good at crafting stories, but I think Planescape Torment is their only real masterpiece, from a story point of view. Their other games have had stories ranging from the great to the truly excellent (KOTOR and BG2 in particular), but PST was the only one to really go beyond the category of "fantastically well-done, but nevertheless formulaic fantasy/sci-fi fare".
Square-Enix are, if anything, even better. Their heavily cutscene-based style isn't to all tastes (though it is to mine), but they've gone beyond the point of just writing good stories and to the kind of level where, when they're on form, their games have well developed structures and themes. Look at Final Fantasy IX (not my favorite installment) and note how the game has theatre scenes at the beginning, the intermission, and the end. Also note how the two little jester guys act as a chorus throughout most of the game. Again, in Final Fantasy X, there's a consistent theme of "death" running throughout the entire game. Yes, it has bright and colourful graphics and a few irritating characters (yes, Wakka, I'm looking at you), but almost every character back-story, side-quest and main plot element in the game revolves around death.
Persona 3 really impressed me from the story point of view. Not because its "go to school and save the world in your spare time" plot is new or exciting, but because it structured itself so as to do a really good job of capturing the feel and structure of a 26 episode anime series (Shakugan no Shana was the one that leaped to mind for me, but other parallels are equally valid) in the format of a game.
I didn't rate Valve's storytelling in Half-Life 2 or its expansion - I just can't buy into the mute Gordon Freeman as a protagonist in that setting. Portal, however, had an absolutely fantastic minimalist story, told through some really clever techniques.
Finally, after a really, really dodgy start with Blue Dragon, I was really impressed with the level of the storytelling in Lost Odyssey. I'm not talking about the main plot here, which is a fairly standard steampunk affair (with heavy inspiration from Final Fantasy VIII). Rather, I'm talking about the dreams you unlocked throughout the game. These were nothing more than animated text, on a lightly illustrated background, with a couple of minimalist sound-effects, yet they did a fantastic job at bringing the game world alive and building up Kaim's character far more effectively than any traditional device would have.
Re:Plenty of good video-game storytelling around (Score:3, Insightful)
Bioware are obviously very good at crafting stories, but I think Planescape Torment is their only real masterpiece, from a story point of view. Their other games have had stories ranging from the great to the truly excellent (KOTOR and BG2 in particular), but PST was the only one to really go beyond the category of "fantastically well-done, but nevertheless formulaic fantasy/sci-fi fare".
I feel compelled to point out that in every single example you've cited of Bioware crafting a good story, the underlying framework was already in place. The Planescape, Forgotten Realms and Star Wars 'worlds' in which these stories unfold were all well established long before Bioware came to the party.
You also appear to judge a story by how well it's presented. Given the medium, fair enough, but bear in mind that there can be a large disconnect between the person(s) responsible for the storyline and those that actually produce the game. If Peter Jackson had made a balls up of the LoTR movies, would you critisise Tolkein for writing a poor story?
It doesn't detract from the quality of the stories, but there's a vast difference between creating a believable world from scratch and simply telling a story within an already existing one.
Re:Compelling characters? (Score:3, Insightful)
a washed-up, gothy 'heroine' from the previous game
Um, yeah, that would be April Ryan, the main character of the series. She didn't start out washed up or cynical, and her character arc is very well written to get her to that point. And, um... Not gothy. I say this as a recovering goth myself.
...a generically plucky artist...
Let's see... Zoe has a failed relationship, a strained friendship, family problems, and is being sucked into a corporate/technological/mystical conspiracy... Yeah, I guess she was pretty plucky, considering. Also, she is a doppelganger of April Ryan in the first game. She's a little more fleshed out as a character, but the point is pitting what is basically who April used to be against who she has become. It's, um, pretty ambitious for a video game. Things haven't worked out for April; will they work out differently for Zoe? Will they work out at all?
...and a generically honorable warrior who discovers that his government is corrupt.
You can't just put "generically" in front of anything and suddenly make it cliche. Kian is not very well-developed as a character, to be sure, but I think he is going to be the main one for the next installment. However, I'm trying to think of how many times in literature I've run into a holy warrior (this isn't just a government; it's a religious government, obviously referring to Islamic theocracies under Sharia Law, but if they expanded like the Catholic church) who is losing faith in his bosses, but for whom that also means losing his faith in his religion...
I started out this post kind of wanting to just poke fun at you, but now as I write it, I'm wondering: Do you even know what "generic" means? I can't think of a single generic thing about The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. I'm sure there are other stories that have similar elements, but it's not like a typical FPS "story" where there's a maverick warrior who doesn't take no guff or something. These are very well-developed characters, especially considering the nascent state of the medium.
They inhabit a story that wanders at best, is never resolved in any way, and cuts off at not just one, but three separate cliffhangers.
Let's see... Three characters, three cliffhangers... Third installment in the works... Do you even know what a cliffhanger is for?
I mean, if you didn't like the game, that's fair enough, but... Ummm... It was anything but "generic."
In my opinion, Ragnar Tornquist is one of the only guys taking video games seriously as a narrative medium, and is doing a great job.
Cool! A Minnie Driver/Anne Hathaway love scene! (Score:2, Insightful)
Storytelling is overrated in favor of good old WOW factor and immersion. Consider the (first) Half-Life.
10 minutes went by before you could even exit the monorail. You were drooling at the attention to detail and immersion. And that was before you saw the spider walker construction equipment moving around.
And it was another 20 after that before you shot your first shot. It was already one of the greatest games ever made before you did much more than look around and "go to work" that day.
The first Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, some others, these all had an astounding WOW factor, but very little in terms of some deeply moving story. Much more of a wrapper thrown around some levels.
Subsequent Quakes actually lost a lot of this charm by changing the "story" from one of a marine fighting mythical monsters to one of a space marine fighting another species trying to invade Earth.
So while a good story can add to a game, it neither creates, nor is sufficient, to generate the WOW factory necessary to make a hit.
Storytelling, shmorytelling (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah Ragnar is ok I guess. But BioWare has some of the top writers in the industry, period. KOTOR is one of the best when it comes to story and dialogue, the plot is far far more interesting than most of the shit Lucas has cranked out lately, for sure. Mass Effect was pretty good too, but did feel a lot like KOTOR. Now, Dragon Age I'm looking forward to, as that project has some of the same writers who also worked on Baldur's Gate II and KOTOR, which are both stellar.
</end fanboy rave>