By Tyler F.M. Edwards

PPeople have told stories for thousands of years, but video games are the only medium that lets them live the stories. For this reason, video games have exploded in popularity, going from a subculture associated with geeks living in their parents’ basement to an entertainment industry with Hollywood box office reach. As the avocation grows, gamers are coming to expect more from their playing experience.

Many players now want video games to tell a good story alongside all the explosions, epic kills, and chainsaw-wielding zombies. There are unique challenges as well as unique advantages to telling a story in game versus movie or book format. Video games offer unparalleled immersion, making the player an active participant in the story rather than a passive observer. When immersion and good plot come together, the result is an utterly gripping story experience that no other medium can match. Why watch some movie character be a badass when you can be the badass?

Sometimes, developers use the immersion advantage as a crutch to downplay a bad storyline. Perhaps this is why movies based on video games haven’t had a lot of success; without the feeling of being there, Doom just isn’t that gripping a narrative. It’ll be interesting to see if films based on more modern plot focused games, such as Legendary Pictures’ impending Mass Effect theatrical release, fair better.

It just may be that narrative heavy stories like ME actually fair better in non-gaming mediums such as film. Sacrificing gameplay in the name of story can mean burying the interactive element under a mountain of dialogue and scripted events. Games like ME sacrifice some of their fun in pursuit of a deep story, and while the resulting plot may be gripping, it’s not as enjoyable as a game that strikes a perfect balance between play and plot. Hitting that balance is the key to creating a timeless classic.

The limitations of creating a strong video game story

One of the first challenges for any game developer seeking to tell a strong story is overcoming technical limitations such as those that arise when attempting to portray characters’ emotions.
Despite amazing advances in graphics, many games still can’t support realistic facial expressions. Those that try often end up creating unholy parodies of the human face. ME’s Miranda Lawson smiling can attest to to this. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

Not so much a graphics issue, but still challenging are, those games that are based in fantasy or sci-fi worlds where characters don’t have faces in the traditional sense. Portal’s GlaDOS for instance is a computer who isn’t even seen for most the game, speaking only through intercom transmissions, and Starcraft II’s Protoss aliens have no facial features other than eyes. In instances such as this, voice-over acting becomes a crucial element. But not just any voice-over will do.

The voices in many video games are often criticized by players for being cheesy and unrealistic,–every World of Warcraft player of a certain vintage has dark memories of Sindragosa and her constant screeching of, “Your pathetic magic BETRAAAAAAAAAYs you!”— but a certain degree of ham is required to compensate for the lack of facial expressions.

Obviously, it’s possible to go too far. Games certainly exist that feature voice acting so laden with exaggeration that William Shatner himself would cringe to hear them. But a little bit of exaggeration goes a long way to make the characters come alive. Voice directors for games must be careful to get as much personality into the lines as possible without crossing over into the absurd.

A related example of the limitations of games as a story-telling medium is dialogue. To avoid cluttering gameplay, dialogue generally needs to be relatively sparse, save perhaps in a few niche games where dialogue is meant to be the meat of action. Mostly though, character lines are often reduced to ridiculous, fourth wall-breaking explanations of gameplay mechanics. It’s best not to think too hard about why the Starcraft heroes spend so much time discussing the finer mechanics of base construction.

There’s not a lot that can be done to fix this one. It’s just something fans of game plots have to deal with.

Striking the gameplay / plot balance

If you focus on gameplay and push the plot off to one side, you end up with a game that feels mindless. If you put plot first, you risk creating a game no one will ever want to play. So how do developers deal with this? There are two ways:

The more common technique – space out dialogue and other crucial story details that keep players from actually playing—is really an exercise in proper timing. There’s a fine finesse aspect here where the gameplay pauses every once in a while for a dump of story, but not so often that players start to feel they aren’t getting enough of a chance to work their control.

The less common method is a hybridization of gameplay and plot. This method tends to ignore forms of plot that pull players out of gameplay in favor of making the story and the gameplay one and the same. Instead of pausing gameplay for a section of dialogue or a plot event, the story elements are incorporated into the action itself. The characters converse with you as you travel between locations, for instance. This is much more seamless and capitalizes on the great strength of video games; their ability to make the player a part of the story.

The second option is obviously the better of the two, but surprisingly, it’s often ignored, even by games with a strong commitment to story.

Ironically, the ME series, despite being hailed as the bellwether of video game story telling does a poor job of merging plot and gameplay. This isn’t a criticism of the ME plotline itself,—the series has a great story and brilliant characters—but the way it’s encorporated is less than stellar.

For the most part, story in ME is delivered through cutscenes; scripted moments when the player cannot directly control their character, only sometimes what the character says. There’s a very rigid divide between the cutscene action of picking from a list of conversation options and moving and fighting. The former is adequate, but it can feel a bit disjointed at times.

Perhaps one of the best examples of video game story is the action role-playing game (RPG) Diablo III. Yes, Diablo III. Again, this is not a commentary on the story itself, but on how it’s told. In D3, much of the story comes in the form of conversations with the central characters and lore items that clarify backstory.

This compares to the role of the Codex and between character conversations in ME, but the difference is that the vast majority of the plot elements in D3 can be consumed while adventuring. Players can talk to thier companions and listen to the narrations about lore items while simultaneously fighting and travelling. There’s no need to interrupt the endless slaughter of demons to experience the story.

The Portal series is another example of game plot done right. These games are almost completely bereft of cutscenes or other elements that interrupt gameplay. GlaDOS’s mocking voice and Wheatley’s idiotic babblings follow players throughout the puzzles, seamlessly blending story with gaming. And when the seams don’t show, that’s when the magic happens.

When it all comes together

Video games may be disadvantaged as a storytelling medium, but they have one crucial upside: you’re in the story. You’re not worrying about whether that dialogue was entirely realistic because, “Oh, shit! A boss! Equip rocket launcher! EQUIP ROCKET LAUNCHER!”

 

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