Friend of the blog Alexander Hellene recently did a post about how video games are not really a storytelling medium. For the most part, he is correct: video games are actually a poor medium for telling stories because the story must justify repeatedly doing the main activity of the game, be it racing, tactical combat, one-on-one fights, etc., and because the gameplay must come first, compromises must be made on narrative.
However, there is one aspect of storytelling that video games do extremely well: choice.
Most video games only give you choices in the gameplay itself, and in most cases, those choices are not consequential. At best, you’ve only figured out how to get to the next level, which will proceed the same way regardless of what you did before.
However, video games are an interactive medium, so choice can be extended far beyond gameplay.
For a story to make sense in a video game, players must be able to choose their actions, and those actions must have a meaningful impact on the narrative.
Long Live the Queen © 2013 Hanako Games
One good example of a game that does this is Long Live the Queen, an indie adventure game. In this game, you play as a princess who must get to her coronation without getting killed or imprisoned along the way; the choices the player makes can either help or hurt this cause, and it is not obvious which one it will be the moment the choice is made. This creates a type of tension that literature, film, and comics cannot provide, because the player becomes responsible for some of what happens in the story.
This is the only way story can be meaningful in a video game; if video games are to be the next great storytelling medium, developers must put more effort into complex, branching storylines. Anything else is a poor imitation of film, and Epstein didn’t kill himself.
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Shining Tomorrow Volume 1: Shadow Heart was specifically written to not be adaptable into a conventional video game format. If it were a game at all, it would be an adventure game.
I don’t know. I find that often, multiple storylines/endings that branch off from choices gives a nightmarish effect; this works for some genres but not others; and you still need an ultimate “True End” to yield a satisfying resolution, at least in my experience.
I can’t name examples without violating Brand Zero, but there are plenty of games where you make choices regarding how you pursue the objective and these choices, as well as your skill, determine whether you succeed or fail, but your choices cannot change the objective or the storyline itself, and they’re great games. I’m thinking of several old shooters, platformers, strategy, dungeon, puzzle and adventure games. These aren’t the cinematic-heavy games that people complain of recently, and would definitely not be better as films.
I would agree with you. The point is that choice is a means of engagement only available to video games. (As an aside, because of Brand Zero, I used a less-famous example of a game where choice is paramount.)
True. When books have attempted it, it doesn’t work so well. While I wouldn’t say it’s necessary for a video game to include it, there’s a lot of unexplored potential there.
And video games are the best place to do it.