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Story Telling in Video Games

 

 

 

With the release of SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010 less then 3 weeks away, it is time that this website begin to devote some more time to discussing video games. That is going to begin with a discussion of story telling in video games. As a warning, there will be some spoilers in this write-up for the Mass Effect series, Halo series and Star Wars movies.

 

For this discussion to happen it must be conceded that video games are a form of art on par with books and movies. They are capable of telling of engaging in this case the player in the story in the same a book is the reader or a movie is the viewer. In some cases, video games are superior at telling stories to other mediums, because the player is an active participant in the story. Ideally, this makes the player feel much more involved in the story then they could be in a movie or book.

 

The thing is video games have not come close to reaching their potential to tell stories. There have been huge advances in the last few years. This is due to new technology allowing developers to do more and developers spending more time on creating a much more engrossing story. The problem is playing a game over the last few years, players will start to notice that for all of the fantastic new story telling in these games, they largely all follow the same format. It is not a secret that the world of video game developers is even today a largely homogeneous population.

 

When games started to have plots, they were derided for always having a happy ending. They were developed by a group of people that were influenced by movies in their childhood that always had a happy ending. Now, a new generation of game developers has taken over, games rarely seem to have happy endings. With this generational change in developers, has become a new formula for developing games. The new formula has an emphasis on creating trilogies. With the new emphasis on trilogies, game developers seem to all be modeling their story arcs on their favorite trilogy of all-time the original Star Wars trilogy.

 

In the first game, players are given a victory. However, the fate of everything is still in peril. In Star Wars, the original Death Star was destroyed, but the Empire was still very strong. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the first Halo they discovered was destroyed, but the war with the Covenant was not close to being defeated. In Mass Effect, Sovereign is destroyed, but the Reapers are still coming.

 

In the second game, the situation gets worse and the player may not even be given a victory. In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire strikes back with a vengeance. At the end, Luke Skywalker loses his hand and Han Solo is captured. There is no victory at all at the end of that movie and the Empire seems on its way to crushing the rebels. In Halo 2, the Covenant find Earth and appear set to destroy the galaxy. There is no real finish to that game. Halo 3: ODST fills in some of the blanks there, and it is essentially a prolonged slaughter of billions of humans in that game with no victory in sight. The developers at BioWare have unannounced that in the unreleased Mass Effect 2 one of the potential outcomes is that your character dies as the situation grows even bleaker.

In the final game, the player saves everyone, usually after suffering heavy personal losses. In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker saved the galaxy, but lost his father in the final battle. In Halo 3, Master Chief saves all life in the galaxy, but loses numerous long-time allies in the final game, of note Sgt. Johnson. Sgt. Johnson was offered as a free download for the Firefight Mode in Halo 3: ODST for people that pre-ordered the game. Mass Effect 3 will not come out until at least 2012, but it would be shocking if it did not follow these same cliches.

 

The fact that these games follow the Star Wars model is not to deride them as "bad" games. Many franchises follow the Star Wars model, the reason these 2 franchises were selected to write about are because they are outstanding franchises. It is true that the strength of the Halo franchise does not lie in its story. However, it became far more apparent how much the game took the inspiration for its story from the Star Wars movies after playing Halo 3: ODST, the most plot intensive of the games. The Halo series revolutionized the shooter genre on consoles. The story in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST was so interesting that it made players want to get to the end of the game to find out how everything turns out. It is disappointing that looking back, players found out they got another Star Wars rehash.

 

When it comes to internal story telling, there is probably no better series for the XBOX 360 then Mass Effect. The game gives players numerous options to play the game many different ways and carry their saves over to the next game. Since, the player is forced to choose who lives or dies in the game, they can have a very different play through and a different game experience for years. A subtle decision, that a player does not pick up on as being important when the game came out, they could realize was very important in Mass Effect 2 or Mass Effect 3. After multiple playthroughs, it became apparent what tremendous work the developers had done in foreshadowing future events. For example, one of the minor side missions in the game is for the player to act as the middle man on a high quality weapons deal. The deal is a set-up. After the exchange, the authorities are going to track the person the player met back to their hideout and takeout their gang. One of the options the player has when the meeting goes down is to try and arrest the contact. That results in gunfire and all of the bad guys getting killed. The authorities now have no one to track. The post mission dialogue makes it clear that thanks to the player getting trigger happy, they are going to have to face well armed criminals in the next few games. That entire side mission can take under 15 minutes to do and it is unclear how much time it will take having to fix that mistake in upcoming games. However, it is safe to guess that it will take longer then the 2 seconds it would have taken to choose the correct option on the dialogue wheel.

There are literally dozens of similar little choices like that the player will be forced to make throughout the game. That is an example of great internal story telling, and it is really revolutionizing the way stories are told within video games. The game has uses outstanding voice talent and has terrific facial modeling to make the games' story more immersive. The thing is, when it comes to storytelling, this game is another example of a game that is less then the sum of its parts. The internal stories are fascinating, compelling and told in a ground breaking manner. Unfortunately, the overarching story is devoid of creativity.

 

It appears this problem is only going to grow within the video game industry. As long as the industry is hooked on sequels and until a new and more diverse population of developers enters the field it safe to expect a lot more of the same. Who knows, maybe in 10 years there will be a generation of developers ripping off the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. In that case, the player can lose at the end of the first and second game. That way video game endings can become even more bleak and unsatisfying.

 

 

Sincerely,