It's dangerous to go alone.
Wow.
Remember when this was the best storytelling video games had to offer?
Yeah.
Now don't get me wrong, I like old men in caves as much as the next guy but I'm very
glad to see the narrative transformation videogames have undergone in the intervening decades
between then and now.
We've got proper writers creating touching stories about the human condition, fantastic
comedies, political epics, the works, all rendered in evocative high definition with
sweeping orchestral scores.
But as much as it pains me to say… we're not quite there yet.
Whilst videogames are able to much more consistently nail the fundamentals of a good story, we're
running into another, much tricker issue.
What is it, exactly that makes a story told in videogame form different from one on the
big screen, small screen or uh, paper screen.
Each storytelling medium has distinct advantages and disadvantages, for example with cinema,
it's the ability to show huge amounts of audiovisual information at once and have the
viewer be able to absorb it passively.
Like how every scene in Alien is packed with subtle thematic cues that you won't even
notice your first time around.
Seriously, watch this movie and this time take a drink whenever you spot something that
looks like a dick, you'll be out cold by the halfway mark.
That brings up the question, then, what sets video game storytelling apart?
Well the obvious answer would be the fact that they're interactive right?
In videogames you *are* the hero of the story, you get to decide what happens, that's the
driving force that makes classic games like mass effect, the witcher and Lee Carvallo's
Putting Challenge work so well, right?
Or is it?
Because there are plenty of brilliant games that know how to tell a good story without
really giving you much of a say at all.
Thomas was alone is a fantastic light puzzle platformer that tells the surprisingly emotional
and character driven story of a bunch of virtual rectangles.
The story TWA tells has no choices, is entirely linear and never really addresses the player
but it still tells a great story that, somehow, could only work inside a video game.
Why is that?
Well, the answer to that is quite simple, Verisimilitude.
Now if you don't know what that word means and suspect it's very pretentious and only
used by arseholes like myself then give yourself a pat on the back because you are right on
the money.
Well Done.
Verisimilitude, simply put, is the impression of being true, or real.
And I'd argue it's a unique quality that only really applies to video game narratives,
because in no other medium is the audience a key component in how the story gets told.
Without you watching, luke's still going to blow up the deathstar, but mario's not
going anywhere unless you make him.
The player is who's responsible for driving things forwards for putting in the effort
to make the story happen, and in that way you kind of become a part of it, making the
game seem much more real than a movie could ever be.
That's verisimilitude.
The key to a good video game story isn't necessarily in letting players choose the
direction of it, but allowing them to become a part of it.
It's why people rightfully disliked final fantasy 13 for essentially being a one giant
cutscene corridor but really liked A Way Out.
In the latter, your cooperation and skill is responsible for pushing the story forwards
rather than you still have zero input on how it plays out.
There are a million different ways to incorporate this unique bond people form with interactive
media, but a good way to start would be to to exploit people's natural tendency to
create characters and stories out of as little as a few lines of code.
Pacman's ghosts are one of the most iconic gaming baddies for a very good reason, they
all seem to have distinct personalities.
Blinky, the red guy aggressively homes in on you, Inky the blue ghost flanks you from
the sides, pinky, the… uhh.
Green one, tries to get in front of you and cut you off.
And Clyde the orange ghost doesn't even go for you at all, he'll close in and then
retreat away from you if he gets too close.
See how just by changing how each ghost attacks you, they've been instilled with this crucial
element of personality that brings the game to life.
Certain players might have a particular ghost that counters their strategy, creating a bit
of a rivalry, and the fact that they each close in from different directions, behind,
in front and the sides gives the impression that three of them are working together to
take you down, and clyde is just kind of there for moral support.
Classic clyde.
More modern games use the same tricks to create stories with no actual writing, but loads
of narrative potential, like Derek Yu's Spelunky, which he talks about in a book of
the same name.
He says, "unlike fan fiction, where the audience is creating stories based on their
favorite worlds, game players are living them.
And in the context of these stories, the random number generator is akin to Fate, setting
up scenarios that at times seem too incredible to be anything but scripted.
" let's see how that plays out in practice.
We set the scene in the jungle, in a special, spooky undead level which are always are full
of loot.
That means in classic form, I got greedy, I sacrificed this cute pug to get a free cape,
went grave robbing for a fancy shotgun and explored the map for even more goodies.
Things were going well!
Then I realised my time in the level before the mega spooky ghost spawned was nearly up
and went into panic mode.
I had these boxes to get, this vampire dude to kill and this big catacomb to raid!
What followed was a panicked run and gun looting spree where I wasted even more time getting
a duplicate cape and two worthless machetes whilst just barely managing to raid the catacomb
and make off with the precious crystal skull within, narrowly avoiding a nasty spook from
the ghost.
The whole experience felt like an actual story, there were stakes, peril, and several memorable
moments.
This was nothing more than Spelunky's systems working as intended, but when combined with
a player's input, they become characters in an improvised story, an appeal spelunky
is based around.
Games are just as much emotional simulations as they are mathematical ones, simply by playing
a game, you're already at least partially invested in it, the trick is in using mechanics
to convey interesting experiences in interesting ways and to deepen that bond between the player's
brain and what's going on in the game.
In Hitman, pulling off the perfect, intricately timed kill and getting that sweet rush of
endorphins as you stroll out of the ensuing carnage tells you all you need to know about
agent 47 and his chosen line of work.
The game doesn't train you to be a master assassin, but it sure as hell does let you
know what being one feels like.
Another great recent example would be the best mission in Thronebreaker, a single player
version of CD project's Gwent.
Pretty mild spoiler warning for a midgame sidequest.
In this sidequest, you get to fight a dragon, and somehow, gwent, a card game, manages to
make you feel just as outgunned, panicked and eventually triumphant as a much more naturalistic
game like monster hunter.
The dragon sets fire to your lines, swoops in for the kill to eat two of your dudes at
once before backing off to recover, giving the fight this awesome feeling of back and
forth as you slowly chip it down.
The fight requires a mix of offense and defense, as well as some clever thinking to eventually
kill, just like a real adrenaline-pumping bossfight.
But how does thronebreaker achieve this with just turn based cards?
Simple systems that evoke not the reality, but the feeling of what they're trying to
convey can be surprisingly effective.
Darkest dungeon's sanity system isn't exactly a nuanced portrayal of mental health,
but it wonderfully captures that slow lovecraftian slide into insanity and self-abuse.
The health system, complete with its gambling death's door mode ignites that faint spark
of hope, that you can win, the darkness can be pushed back, that is of course before you
die to a skeleton splashing you with one too many cups of sad juice.
Thronebreaker's dragon isn't realistic, but it does instil those same feelings of
intimidation and panic as it unpredictably moves around, tears into formation and shrugs
off damage you throw at it, all whilst being way more powerful than any card you could
ever have access to, further ratcheting up the idea that this thing is a big deal…
even if the mission itself is actually kind of easy.
The worst thing a game can do if it wants to create a good story is make you not care,
to lose that sense of investment.
Which is why realism, counterintuitively, is a often a one-way ticket to a bored, disconnected
player.
durability mechanics and hunger and thirst system might be realistic, but unless your
game is focused on these ideas, they often become an annoyance, distracting you from
the game.
If you're not playing your part as the engine that drives the story, the game doesn't
really work.
This is the reason why games insist on slapping in quicktime events and those weird button
holdy bits into what would otherwise be cutscenes, they're to maintain that bond and ensure
that you don't lose interest, particularly in important scenes.
Those weird dialogue options where they all lead to the same response are another example
of this phenomena, by giving you a chance to affect the story even a little bit and
make a choice that reflects your personality, you become more invested in what happens.
They're simple tricks, but imagine how much more boring phoenix wright would be if it
was literally a zero-input straight path through the story without the dialogue options or
chances to get things wrong, even if those things never really end up changing the plot.
Oh wait, they made an anime about it?
Looks like you don't have to imagine, just watch that and then probably fall asleep.
Videogames aren't just interactive, they're collaborative, a story you and the developer
team up to tell, and far too often I think people on both sides of the exchange forget
that, and miss out on creating some truly unique experiences that can't be replicated
anywhere else.
Which at last brings me onto the game that inspired this whole video.
Return of the Obra Dinn.
What a game, and one that proves without a shadow of a doubt that when players make the
story happen, we can create something really cool.
Return of the obra dinn sees you playing an insurance investigator trying to figure out
how much compensation needs to be dished out to the families of some dead sailors.
Sounds boring right, well what if I told you this game was developed by Lucas Pope, developer
of papers please and the man who managed to turn checking passports into a tense political
thriller.
The story sees you figuring out what happened to the Obra Dinn, an all but empty ship that
unexpectedly arrives at port 5 years after it was declared missing.
The ship is filled with sunbleached corpses and the spectre of something truly horrible.
Luckily, you have access to a ledger of the crew, a picture of everyone aboard and a magic
watch that can show you the moment of someone's death.
The game is essentially a giant logic puzzle with you attempting to match up faces to names
to causes of deaths in an effort to identify everyone, but the real genius of Obra dinn
is in how this story unfolds.
See, everything of interest has already happened, but you get to discover and unravvel the intricate
lives and deaths of the Obra Dinn's crew and in doing so make the story your own.
Some moderate spoilers for of the fates of some side characters, though not the solution
to their respective puzzles.
If you want to play the game totally blind then skip ahead to this timestamp.
One of my most memorable moments in the game was in tracking the adventures of this guy
with the circle tattoos.
He pops up everywhere.
Here he is working on the rigging, here he is fighting a monster and here he is getting
torn apart by a kraken.
The dude gets around which was super frustrating during my first few hours with the game as
it makes him almost impossible to identify without out of game knowledge, but my dogged
attempts to identify the guy made me form a bit of a bond with him.
He was mysterious, elusive, but also kind of the unsung hero of the crew who deserved
to be remembered, he was the white whale of the Obra Dinn.
Mr jack of all trades isn't the only guy I felt a connection with.
There's this gullible italian dude who gets shanked, Brennan, who's always getting caught
up in zany adventures, and who has appeared 3 times in this footage so far.
Or the ship's resident artist who… well you'll know when you hear it.
All of these characters have nothing but a few still vignettes and most don't even
get a voice line, but simply by uncovering and bringing their story to life, we're
able to turn a face, a name and a cause of death into a fully fledged personality.
By the time you're done in Return of the Obra Dinn, I have no doubt you'll have remembered
an interesting detail or fun moment about more than half of its 60 strong cast despite
the fact that most of them die without ceremony and don't have a single spoken line, that
is the strength of videogames, they connect you to the story, and in doing so make it
feel better than real.
So what can we learn from this as people who play and enjoy videogames?
Well I think the most important takeaway is to learn to approach games on their own terms.
Though they are interactive media, games need to be tackled from the right perspective,
with the right frame of mind.
If we play mass effect expecting to decide the fate of the galaxy then we'll end up
fighting the game because that's not what it offers, but if we allow ourselves to settle
into a campy character-focused space opera that we can sometimes change the texture of,
we'll have a much more fun time.
Same with games with less of a strict narrative focus.
If you spend all your time expecting a certain kind of experience, you'll have trouble appreciating
what the game is trying to do.
I had the very same experience with Return of the Obra Dinn, I expected a puzzle game,
and had a pretty miserable time until I realised that it was much more focused on organic exploration
than it was on actually challenging your brain.
The question of if games are art is as far as I'm concerned a foregone conclusion.
But we're still very much in the process of figuring out how games are art.
And it's only by experimenting with the form and doing as many weird and interesting
things as we can within the limits of the video gaming medium that we can one day approach
the zenith of artistic achievement.
The greatest work of fiction ever penned.
I'm talking of course about national treasure 2 starring nicholas cage.
But that's a story for another time.
Hello, thanks for watching.
If you'd like to look at the script for this video, I've as of now started putting
them in the description for those of you who can't be bothered to watch… but did anyway…
uh..
I've not really thought it through.
This video like all the other nonsense on this channel is supported in part by you guys.
And as is financially motivated tradition, here's a list of my top tier supporters:
Samuel VanDer Plaats Alex Deloach
LunarEagle1996 Jonathan Kristensen
Strategia in Ultima Patrick Rhomberg
Brian Notarianni William Johansen
Lucas Slack Joshua Binswanger
Derk-Jan Karrenbeld Aseran
Baxter Heal ReysDad
Daniel Mettjes James Lamont
Chao
Thank you to those guys, thank you to all my other patrons and a merry novembermas thankyou
to you for watching as well.
See ya!
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