I will preface this with a fact. I am not in the games industry. I would like to be but I don't have the experience or connections to do so yet. I do love video games and I know for a fact I am not the only person who does. A well crafted game with a good, engaging story and mechanics that reinforce the story (instead of getting in the way of it) is akin to art to me.
What got me started in thinking about this today is just looking over various games that have come out recently and the trends involved in them. Games like Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Saint's Row 3, Arkham City, Rage, Fallout 3/New Vegas, even Deus Ex: Human Revolution to an extent falls in to this. These are large, sprawling, sandboxy-type games where a player could spend hours at a time running around, admiring epic landscapes, playing at being the in-world FedEx person, slaughtering hordes of...well whatever they feel like, and on and on and on. Some of these games (especially Bethesda's titles) people spend countless hours on end (I've seen upwards of 300 hours) playing. They are getting enjoyment out of it and, good for them.
I think these games could do a lot better.
Currently, these games play out like so many MMO's on the market with the addition of a singular, mostly linear, main story (I'm looking at you Oblivion/Fallout 3). This isn't, necessarily, bad in it's own right. Clearly there are plenty of fans of this particular sort of game and critics tend to gush a bit all over them like these games just gave them the best head of their lives. And I'll admit it, the games are beautiful. They just are. But they don't fulfill much in the way of a need for me.
I want to experience a good story, yes, but game designers seem to forget they are crafting an interactive game. This requires more interaction than "Move your character along because the fucking script says so." Let me relate my experience with Oblivion.
I start off in the prison, then moving through tunnels with Captain Picard espousing about his nocturnal emissions regarding my character and that I'm supposed to save the world or whatever. Then all hell breaks loose (or seems to at first) as these giant red hell portal things start opening everywhere. So I do the "I'm the damn hero! Die hellbeasts!" thing. Then my ADD strikes and I decide to go wandering for the next five years because this world is so full of useless crapheads that I really don't give a shit if it gets destroyed because I can beat the everloving fuck out of anything that decides to look at me cross. So I'll survive the end and fuck all the rest of them. But the game refuses to get on. Everything just comes to a stop and waits ever so patiently for me to come back like a needy little puppy that refuses to leave because I happened to give it a passing glance.
Now, look. I understand that rushing players along lest the world come to an end would get in the way of the sandbox and the exploring unending vistas of extreme beauty and what not but honestly, if that's what you want players to do, maybe this isn't the sort of story you want to tell. This is an example of the mechanics not quite jiving with the story, instead of supporting it. Were this my story to tell, while leaving everything else mechanically alone, I would probably tell something of an intrigue story instead. Something that could be slow paced but thrilling at the same time, teasing the player along and making them want to find out answers. If I were to change the mechanics I would also give them the means to choosing how they find those answers and those choices having an affect on the main storyline in turn. But how could I do this?
We have a system already in place to predict a player's behavior. The achievement system (or trophies, badges, etc). Imagine for a moment that you're going through the game world, fighting off whatever and you get an achievement for putting an arrow through the eyesockets of X number of mooks. Next thing you know, word seems to have spread about your phenomenal arrow slinging skills and mooks are now much more cautious about running at you full-bore. They are more defensive, sneaky or otherwise trying to get in close to neutralize your arrow-shooting prowess. This would give you more reason to alter your mook-killing style beyond simply growing bored of putting arrows through eyes or kneecaps or what have you.
But this can have a broader affect on how you progress through the story as well. Imagine you're progressing through the intrigue story mentioned, but you've got that nasty munchkin habit of kicking open doors and slaughtering guards en masse. Assuming any intelligence on the part of your enemy they're not going to just pile more mooks on you because obviously this is not working. Maybe, instead, they start putting traps on the doors you kick in as routinely as the local SWAT team eager to find Bin Laden because they think he's not dead yet. They may even take all this and alter the way their final solution might play out, giving you a completely different experience towards the end.
Make not just obvious signs that might as well be labeled "Your story will change here!" but include the player's play-style into the story itself. Honestly the number of styles are not infinite, not as we commonly know them, and can be restrained further by the methods that you allow to them, which brings me to another point.
Boss fights.
Honestly, if you're going to have these in your game, then allow the styles of play you accept be valid in all of them (I'm eyeing you on this one, Human Revolution). And don't just have them for the sake of having them. They should come at a time when a player has made their danger to the antagonists' plans clear. This requires some foresight from the writers, I understand, and it can be difficult to work around. But honestly, if I've gone through your world and pulled together enough disparate facts that I could splash your misdeeds all over the news, or if 'the prophesy' says that I am destined to save the world, then it's probably a good idea to have some big bad thing try to stop me. When it fails, the antagonists should probably try to figure out why and how, instead of assuming I'm dead and letting me slaughter wholesale even more of their mooks. If they think I'm dead and I go out of my way to hang neon signs on my helmet that fires off flares every four seconds, then how the bloody fuck can they be surprised I'm alive? Let's assume I want to actually use my 'death' to my advantage, I should be able to capitalize on that moment.
Finally, put a little initiative in your players hands. Don't make them play lackey to a king or helpless peasant or gang boss or what have you. If you're as clever as me (and I know you are), I'm sure you can think of how to write your clues with enough subtle and blatant points to move your player along towards the next goal without forcing them to sit through an exposition dump as someone cries all over their face or decides to go off on some grand pontifical schpiel about how awesome and powerful they are (which is utter horseshit, sir. If you're that damned badass, why do you need me to go kill that loud horse next door?). If a player wants to do a sidequest, make it a mini-story sure, but make it meaningful. Nothing kills my enthusiasm in an MMO faster than "Kill 10 rats" quests, and has unerringly the same effect in single player games. If you're going to take a page from MMO's, take one from City of Heroes. At least people there talk about how awesome a player-character is. Meaningful doesn't mean shovel gold coins or credits or shiny trinkets at the player. Make the sidequest's results affect the story as much as the mook slaughtering previously mentioned. If I save a whole town of people from a rampaging barglesnatch beast by god they better be not only greatful, but willing to enlist whatever aid they can offer in the climax of the story.
Following these things will take a lot of forethought, testing and more thought, I understand. But think of it this way. Imagine two, three, four players all have played the same game and have wholly different experiences, even the ending itself. They talk and the others had no idea some of those things other players are talking about were possible. Now they have to play again! Look at the original Fallout and the various potential outcomes there. If it were a more solid story and had less bugs it could have very well been the video game equivalent of a Da Vinci masterpiece (in my eyes at least). One could only imagine the laurels that would be heaped upon a game that had even a modicum of graphical fidelity of most modern games that included such actually epic story innovation to combine with appropriate mechanics supporting the story.
If you want to hear the opinions of actual experts though, go watch and listen to the Extra Credits folks. Seriously, they're great and entertaining as well as educational.
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