The Story so far – A look at video game story telling

Story.  It has become one of those things we don’t truly appreciate.  Something that has been around for so long that these days many of us simply take for granted the significance story has played in shaping civilization as we know it.   And this couldn’t be more evident than in the overflowing pool of games that continue to be released and continue to be disappointments despite being designed with some of the largest budgets, biggest teams, and most cutting-edge technology ever (games like Bioshock 2, Fable III, the Medal of Honor reboot, Final Fantasy XIII, and Alpha Protocol to name a few).

I think it’s time for a refresher.

From cavemen sitting around a fire boasting of their latest exploits, recalling the days of their forefathers and recounting the beliefs of their people; to the epics of Homer, memorized by wandering bards and vagrant scribes who would retell the legends of Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus in cities around the Mediterranean; to the enthralling works of Shakespeare enacted by a company of players in playhouses across Britain, Europe, and now the World; to the majesty of the silver screen and the stars that continue to be born in front of our eyes as they portray some of the most endearing and memorable characters that we carry with us throughout our lives. Like a river slicing through a mountain, it has shaped who we are as individuals, as nations, and as a species over thousands of years.

My argument is simple. If you want a game to be great, if it is plot-driven in any way, you need a great story. If more developers took this point to heart, the overall caliber of games would improve considerably. Do not mistake my point. It is not that a great story will automatically translate into a great game, or that every game needs to have a story to be great, or even that story is an essential tool for a game (it’s not i.e. Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero). Many games would suffer if they were encumbered with the full narrative treatment – can you imagine Super Mario playing out like a soap opera? It gives me the creeps just thinking about it. The goal of this feature is to shed some light on the story of story in games. To highlight what’s done well, and what – as my third grade teacher put on my report card – needs improvement.

Think of the games you love the most. How many had a great story that kept you captivated? Now take a look at the best games of the past decade. Even just the past five years. I did this by looking at all the different “Game of the Year” awards given out by magazines, websites, conferences, and reader polls. You quickly notice that the same few games for any given year keep reappearing in many of the different lists. From the past 5 years this includes titles like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Gears of War, Resident Evil 4 (ok that’s 6 years, sue me, it was a good game), Super Mario Galaxy, Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Portal, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Little Big Planet, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Assassins Creed II, and Red Dead Redemption.

Of course the above list is subject to individual tastes, but with the exception of Super Mario Galaxy and Little Big Planet, every one of the games that were honored with a “Game of the Year” award have embraced storytelling as something that, as a tool, enriches gameplay. Even Portal, which is mostly just a puzzle-solver, employed a basic narrative that people loved. This sets these games apart, high above the rest, in what is becoming a very crowded space. These special few have cut a trail through the game coliseum and left a path of game carcasses to rot in their wake.

By now the question on your mind has to be: okay, but just how much better is a game with a strong focus on story? Good question. You get a gold star! In a perfect world we’d have the exact same game to compare against itself, only one with a developed story and one without it. Since that’s impossible, we’ll do the next best thing and examine two games part of the same series: Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Here is the perfect example of the difference story can make. The original Deus Ex was an FPS-RPG hybrid that has been called the best PC Game of all time. Its successor, while still a fairly good game, fell well short of this mark. My autopsy points to story asphyxiation as the cause of death.

In the first game, you played as nano-augmented UNATCO agent JC Denton. The game let you choose how to solve the challenges placed before you in a number of ways, but always kept you on the same narrative path, first towards discovering the truth, then to preventing the conspiracy from coming to fruition. Characters you met earlier in the game all had their own histories and values and went through their own moral dilemmas when the truth was brought to light. It was a rich world filled with extra bits of information for players to digest along the way in the form of newspapers, books, and email accounts. As a character, JC Denton went through an evolution from being a proponent of his mission and UNATCO, to having doubts about his work, questioning authority, and then eventually choosing to fight against the conspiratorial forces when all the hard evidence was laid out before him. For the player, it was a rewarding experience to slowly exposed you to the fictional future of Deus Ex, let you understand that world and JC as a person, gradually unravel the mysteries around the Illuminati and Majestic 12, and then fight as a one man army against them.

In the successor, set 20 years later, you played as Alex D., a Tarsus trainee who’s been moved to Seattle after the city of Chicago was destroyed in a terrorist attack. Soon after the initial escape from an attack on the Seattle facility, you are exposed to the various competing factions in this world and roughly understand their designs. Although there is a good amount of effort put into the voice acting, audio synchronization, and shadowing environments, because it was also produced with console play in mind, the depth of levels and story overall was sharply curtailed. The characters in this world felt much more two dimensional and less fleshed out as real people, which far outweighed the aforementioned good qualities. The rest of the game became a menu of missions for the different factions that you can choose to do or ignore at your pleasure. It’s the choose your own adventure style of plot that’s become more popular in recent years, usually with a straight dichotomy popularized by Knights of the Old Republic in choosing light or dark, good or evil.

However Invisible War chose to forego moral clarity in favor of moral murkiness.  Ultimately, as a review of Invisible War on GameSpot put it, “There really is no clear sense of right or wrong in this game, which is interesting — though odd — and not always conducive to a satisfying experience.” And that my friends is the problem. A bad story translates into a bad player experience, which is fundamentally how a game is measured. The sequel to Deus Ex failed to fully deliver in this regard. When considered on its own, it could be considered a solid game, however the visible difference when both games are put side by side tell the true story.

Do the games of this generation give you more hope or despair? Does a good story really translate to a better game experience? Do you think a greater emphasis on story development would lead to a higher number of great games being published? For me, as long as story is an afterthought, we the players will be left with that odd taste in our mouths, as if we are at a restaurant and the chef forgot a key ingredient in our meal, and now it just tastes pasty and bland.  I don’t go back to eat at restaurants that serve me crappy food, so why would I keep supporting developers that make crappy games?

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