
Designing game narrative - Ideka
http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative
======
twic
The thread linking the games Mr Lee praises is that they are, to a large
extent, sandboxes. Yes, some of them have endings, but they get the player
there by dumping them in a world and letting them do what they like.

Portal is the least sandboxy of the games mentioned (maybe apart from
Tetris!), in that it has highly structured, intentionally designed levels with
well-defined goals, but it still manages to give the player a huge amount of
the responsibility for getting through them.

A weaker thread is procedural generation. Dwarf Fortress and Brogue have
procedurally generated levels. Journey doesn't, but probably could have done.
Portal doesn't, and i doubt could. Tetris kind of does. But that's a higher
incidence of procedural generation than in the general population of games. Is
there something about procedural generation that intrinsically puts narrative
responsibility back in the hands of the player? That seems plausible; a game
designer who gives up the power to shape levels explicitly gives up some power
to shape stories explicitly. Think also about Civilisation and SimCity; the
software is entirely story-free, but any given game of either of those is
bursting with stories.

What tests of this hypothesis are coming down the pipe? No Man's Sky is the
one that springs to mind.

~~~
araes
Thank you, I was going to say that one of the main reasons I play Civilization
is for the often strange stories that can develop from the procedural content
and simple sets of rules. "The rebel sons of nearby Valetta who embark on a
hundred year campaign of foreign shores, sometimes dashed on fortunes rocks,
but always rebuilding, and becoming the first people ever to experience
firearms."

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snu
An interesting article, gave me much to think about as I'm planning out a game
to make.

My thought on it tho, I think the article misses a GOOD use of cutscenes: A
good story is all about tension and release, and a cutscene can provide a
necessary release from intense gameplay (not that it's the only way).

Am I wrong on this? I'm sure there are differing opinions on this depending on
what game genres you enjoy (I'm quite a fan of traditional RPGs).

~~~
teamonkey
Yeah, when well-timed a cutscene can be part of a syncopated rhythm, or be a
satisfying moment when you can throw down your controller in exhaustion after
an intense piece of action, or they can be used to frame a shift in gameplay.

That's not to say they're not overused in general, but they can have their
use.

On the subject of overuse, one reason is that a linear story and movie-like
cutscenes are easier and cheaper to write and make, at least compared to the
alternative. The processes are well-known and so they're easier to budget for.

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readerrrr
Half-Life 1 did this so well. It was primarily a shooter, but if you followed
closely you could get a story arch. You never lost control of you character
and every cutscene was optionable( except the very first and last, you still
need some pacing ). This is why I consider Half-Life 2 an inferior game, even
though it does everything else better, you constantly get into situations
where the main characters talk for several minutes and you can only watch and
wait. HL1's gameplay flows, HL2 is a stop-and-go.

~~~
tehwalrus
I agree, except that even on modern machines HL stops the game every 2 minutes
to load the next area (this is especially painful when the train is moving
through the intro cutscene.)

~~~
readerrrr
Sure, you have to take the limits of their engine into account. The load time
is under a second on modern machine and with SSD it is almost instant.

Hopefully HL3( ... ) comes with seamless levels.

~~~
tehwalrus
I couldn't afford an SSD big enough for my entire steam collection... ;)

and I too hope to play HL3 at some point before I die!

~~~
eropple
Steam supports splitting libraries. Even before that, symlinks were common.

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yzzxy
Dark Souls and Demon Souls, two games normally only noted for being extremely
difficult, are some of the best examples of ludonarrative assonance I've ever
seen. The mechanics of the games not only reflect the events of their plots
cohesively, but also serve as metaphors towards larger aesthetic and
philosophical themes shared by the stories and settings.

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emsy
I find it rather strange that the author asks for open mindedness but
seemingly dismisses the whole idea of the cut scene narrative. On the other
hand he praises the generated, "natural" narrative of Dwarf Fortress, Brogue
and Journey. One of his remarks about Journey is rather interesting:

> When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their
> presence and introduction. When you communicate with them through singing
> and body language, all sorts of imagery forms in your mind about the other
> player’s personality (that’s character development!)

The character development part is a very important part of a narrative, and is
in its way, only possible because of other, real players. His other two
examples, Brogue and Dwarf Fortress, have huge short comings in this regard. A
true, emotionally deep and complex character development and interactions
between those characters is only possible if the other characters are played
by humans, the characters are predefined or if there would be a sophisticated
AI. The first variant is used in Journey, the second is used in "cut scene"
type games and the latter is currently not technically possible. So when the
author claims:

> At least silent films are excused by their technical limitations – no
> comparable excuse exists for games.

I take that with a grain of salt. Dwarf Fortress, Brogue and Journey are great
examples of how to expand the narrative experience and where games could be
heading to in the future. But in my opinion, they are an addition to, rather
than a replacement for cut scene narrative games.

~~~
potatolicious
I think it's not really about dismissing the idea of the cutscene narrative -
cutscenes can certainly be very well done, but a challenge for game developers
to develop the medium's own mechanisms for storytelling instead of continually
borrowing from film.

The best storytelling we've managed so far is temporarily suspending the
"game" part of video games and putting on a Hollywood production. We're not
really blazing our own trails, we're just getting better and better at
emulating filmmakers.

There are few games that seem to be able to tell a story without completely
stopping gameplay or removing agency - the very thing that makes video games
video games. Developers _realize_ this limitation, but our only response to it
so far is to let the player move the camera a bit and throw in quick-time
events (mash X to escape! oh too late, let's try that again!). That's not
really agency.

One game that's interesting is an indie game called Kentucky Route Zero - it's
a point and click adventure but with level design borrowing heavily from
_stage_ theater. It's a nice breath of fresh air, even if it isn't a complete
reinvention of in-game storytelling.

I think Bioshock Infinite needs a quick nod for some advances in storytelling.
While it's not free from player-control-robbing cutscenes, a huge portion of
the game's story is communicated in its environment - something that film is
less capable of doing, and games are uniquely positioned to exploit. It's a
good example of something playing to the medium's strengths (if only the
gameplay was as good as the storyline...)

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tehwalrus
I loved the contrast of Tomb Raider and Portal - interactive, fast thinking
rather than "press X to not die" nonsense during a "cutscene".

I also really love the way they break down storytelling axes - dungeons and
dragons adds the "interactive" axis without the "AV" one, which presents its
own challenges. (if you want a good example of this, I recommend the "critical
hit" podcast[1], although be warned you'll need to listen to literally
hundreds of hours of people playing D&D, which is not ideal if you're only
interested in the story's interactivity.)

I thought they missed a trick not analysing Dishonoured a bit more though, as
the game world reflects your playing style (high/low chaos). Which reminds me,
I should probably play that game in kill everything/high chaos mode at some
point.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/critical-hit-dungeons-
dr...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/critical-hit-dungeons-
dragons/id327725953?mt=2)

~~~
sogen
Shame they didn't mention Metal Gear Solid (PSX, 1999) initial cutscene, with
the titles on-screen as if you were in a movie!

Kojima's a genius

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lifeformed
Author here! Dang, I browse HN daily and didn't notice when my own article
gets posted until it's too late. Anyways, glad you guys liked it. One thing
that I want to clarify is that the examples and analogies I give are just to
help illustrate points. A lot of people have read too much into them, and
that's not my intention.

Also, I don't mean to disparage any particular game, or style of games. My
goal is to show that video games are a very unique medium for presenting
narrative, and so far we have mainly just tried to emulate cinema. There's a
lot of experimentation out there, and still more that needs to be done, before
we can say we've really understood the medium.

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alexyes
Books have more senses than movies and games, because in books, you can
describe touch feelings, smells, temperatures, etc., thus giving readers a
multisensorial experience. In movies you can only rely on sound and image.
Zero other senses. Smell in books is superior to smell in movies.

~~~
ibrad
I wouldn't say zero sense. When I watched sin city, I could smell the yellow
guy. It all depends on how the story is presented. The color scheme of sin
city definitely has sensory effect beyond what you can see.

~~~
alexyes
great example! that's so true

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soneca
Here is a nice and deep analysis of Prince of Persia narrative:
[http://www.thewhitereview.org/features/turning-the-game-
arou...](http://www.thewhitereview.org/features/turning-the-game-around/)

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catshirt
i'm surprised the article doesn't talk about The Stanley Parable at all.

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eudox
We can put people on the Moon and smash protons to pieces, but we can't handle
apostrophes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We USED to be able to put people on the moon. Sigh.

