Archive for April 2013
Game Narrative
Game
narrative has long been one of the many devices used in gaming to move a player
along in the game’s story. Typically it has been viewed as a relationship you
hold between the game, the creator and the player. What makes it a topic of
heated debate to me is the lack of direct narrative needed to progress a game
if any at all.
Yes
we’ve all been trapped in cut scenes constantly holding down the a button to
try and get through it.
I can’t even tell you how many times Warcraft made me do this. Cut scenes hold a vital role for most games to tell the story of the character or event in a short amount of time to push the character closer to his/her immediate goals. Sometimes this is well crafted in games such as Zelda Ocarina of Time or Half Life. There are games who heavily abuse it such as some of the latest Resident Evil games and Final Fantasy which can get up to about short movie length quality. This, I find, ridiculous. A story doesn’t need a perfect bow to wrap up the player so we know exactly every angle of the action we are about to play out. Some of the best games I’ve played have used their game mechanics to tell their narrative story.
I can’t even tell you how many times Warcraft made me do this. Cut scenes hold a vital role for most games to tell the story of the character or event in a short amount of time to push the character closer to his/her immediate goals. Sometimes this is well crafted in games such as Zelda Ocarina of Time or Half Life. There are games who heavily abuse it such as some of the latest Resident Evil games and Final Fantasy which can get up to about short movie length quality. This, I find, ridiculous. A story doesn’t need a perfect bow to wrap up the player so we know exactly every angle of the action we are about to play out. Some of the best games I’ve played have used their game mechanics to tell their narrative story.
For
example instead of a small cut in from your companion character telling you
exactly how to use the new instrument you found you simply need to play the
game to learn how it functions and what it means to you.
A great game that does this is the first Castlevania. You immediately start out playing the game. No press this to do this specific action. No dumb fairy telling you exactly what you’re fighting. All you need to is play the game for it to start making sense. There are very little dialogue scenes in this game and it works perfectly without them.
A great game that does this is the first Castlevania. You immediately start out playing the game. No press this to do this specific action. No dumb fairy telling you exactly what you’re fighting. All you need to is play the game for it to start making sense. There are very little dialogue scenes in this game and it works perfectly without them.
Shadow
of the Colossus had a rough total of three cut scene that you would need to
contend with. Each one of these served a very specific purpose and built suspense
and mystery to the story. I wasn’t completely clued into the full story on each
cut scene and I was perfectly happy about it. It wasn’t until the end that I was
caught feeling quick sorrow and betrayal that I had mistaken as a desperate
struggle to save a loved one’s life. That’s more than I could have asked for in
most movies.
One
final game I have to offer on the table is Journey. This is a game that quickly
sweeps you up with little instruction and has left me feeling more compassion
for a stranger that I normally do when playing online games. It uses its
fundamental game designs to carry on a story in and of itself with out the
forceful help of cut scene. In hindsight that’s what cut scenes really do for a
game experience. They take the controller out of the gamer’s hands and sit them
down for story time in an almost forceful way. Why not use what a game does
best and have the player find and discover the story through the game.
Lolita
“All
at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each
other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might
have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every
particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate
as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so”
Lolita
is all about deception to the reader and how manipulative a writer can strive
to be. Lolita was a very special book in that the narrative tells you from the
beginning that he may or may not be a completely honest and reliable source to
trust to tell his story. Immediately we are implanted with the fact that this
narrator is suspicious. A small fragment of disbelief is always present but
then shockingly disappears as the story is told.
Humbert
slowly tells the tale of a forbidden fruit love that he holds with a young girl
Dolores. At first we are shocked by his twisted fantasies with 14 year old
girls but little do we know we are being sucked down the rabbit hole beneath
our feet.
As
the story progresses his descriptions became less uncomfortable and I began
actually questioning whether or not this kidnapped and drugged little girl actually
had feelings from Humbert. The book’s planning was just that good in that it
tricked me to question Dolores at times when clearly she was the victim in this
story.
Lolita
is a very successful book in the sense that it elicits a response from the
audience that is exactly what Vladimir Nabokov’s intent. The audience is taken
away on this false love story and spit out at the end with an icky sweaty bed
sheet feeling in the end. I found myself being discusted that I had ever
believed Humbert to begin with let alone feel challenged that I had been lead
along by an author for this amount of time.
Entertainment vs. Art
Last class we touched upon Comics and they’re rich uprising
against the norm. After careful debate as to why such a stark backlash would
happen it reminded me of a very similar backlash that happened in the video
game industry. For a long time video games were concerned with getting hands on
joysticks and bodies in the arcade. Everything was based on entertainment and challenge.
Yes, games still keep these aspects as golden statues in their temples but many
games have started to shift away from readability and into something a lot bigger.
Video games as art.
This concept has been highly snubbed by many a generation but due to a few daring games and developers willing to push the limits it’s becoming more accepted. You will always have your point and click shooter, VS combat games, RTS and just about every other concoction of immediate gratification. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up on Counterstrike and love Team fortress 2, but they are not the games that leave me awake at night trying to really dig into why the game made me feel the way I did. One of the first games that I would spend hours replaying was a small game called Flow.
Flow didn’t have a story line; no princess’ to save or destiny’s to be revealed. Everything was up to you based off of very few guidelines that held the game together. You can race through the game going right to the lower level or you can take your time and go for building yourself up by killing other creatures. Either way you eventually make your way down where the equivalence of a boss is spinning in the black abyss all by himself. While battling him you start to notice how neck and neck the fight is. If you ever disengage him he doesn’t chase you. If you go up to a upper level he doesn’t penalize you. If you do eventually kill him you’re taken all the way back up to the top and start anew. This quick action is very jarring and I typically am left to wonder what I just did. Was it all for nothing? No bonus’ or power ups. No extra and bigger bosses? Who was that I just killed? Was it me? Did he/she go through the same life I just journeyed down? Did I even need to kill him/her?
It’s right about now that I get very in depth with the whole thing and need to put the game down. For me this eerie sense of emotion is rarely given to me by other games. I’m not contemplating my opponent’s entire life span after launching a whole magazine into him/her. I’m looking for the sweet reward behind the kill – the little animated points above how much damage I’ve dealt or If I had successfully made a pentakill because I killed 4 more of his teammates moments earlier.
A very similar game that was widely acclaimed was Shadow of the Colossus. I personally adore this game. It does lead you into the more traditional sense of “save the princess” but gut loads it with mystery and guilt. I never felt guilty about saving princess Zelda before but this time I seriously questioned my entire journey and had to deal with my own actions. This is a rare feeling coming from a game. It felt like I had a true hand in decisions and how they affected my character and his outcome even though the game would tell you where you would go next.
I could go on for hours talking about these games and we haven’t even gotten to multiplayer games such as ICO and Journey. I’m sure there are others out there who do far better jobs at dissecting these issues than I but if you haven’t experienced this for yourself I implore you to go out and play these games for yourself. There are plenty out there they I have not even mentioned.
See what you feel and see if they really line up only as entertainment and not great master pieces that they should be recognized as.
Video games as art.
This concept has been highly snubbed by many a generation but due to a few daring games and developers willing to push the limits it’s becoming more accepted. You will always have your point and click shooter, VS combat games, RTS and just about every other concoction of immediate gratification. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up on Counterstrike and love Team fortress 2, but they are not the games that leave me awake at night trying to really dig into why the game made me feel the way I did. One of the first games that I would spend hours replaying was a small game called Flow.
Flow didn’t have a story line; no princess’ to save or destiny’s to be revealed. Everything was up to you based off of very few guidelines that held the game together. You can race through the game going right to the lower level or you can take your time and go for building yourself up by killing other creatures. Either way you eventually make your way down where the equivalence of a boss is spinning in the black abyss all by himself. While battling him you start to notice how neck and neck the fight is. If you ever disengage him he doesn’t chase you. If you go up to a upper level he doesn’t penalize you. If you do eventually kill him you’re taken all the way back up to the top and start anew. This quick action is very jarring and I typically am left to wonder what I just did. Was it all for nothing? No bonus’ or power ups. No extra and bigger bosses? Who was that I just killed? Was it me? Did he/she go through the same life I just journeyed down? Did I even need to kill him/her?
It’s right about now that I get very in depth with the whole thing and need to put the game down. For me this eerie sense of emotion is rarely given to me by other games. I’m not contemplating my opponent’s entire life span after launching a whole magazine into him/her. I’m looking for the sweet reward behind the kill – the little animated points above how much damage I’ve dealt or If I had successfully made a pentakill because I killed 4 more of his teammates moments earlier.
A very similar game that was widely acclaimed was Shadow of the Colossus. I personally adore this game. It does lead you into the more traditional sense of “save the princess” but gut loads it with mystery and guilt. I never felt guilty about saving princess Zelda before but this time I seriously questioned my entire journey and had to deal with my own actions. This is a rare feeling coming from a game. It felt like I had a true hand in decisions and how they affected my character and his outcome even though the game would tell you where you would go next.
I could go on for hours talking about these games and we haven’t even gotten to multiplayer games such as ICO and Journey. I’m sure there are others out there who do far better jobs at dissecting these issues than I but if you haven’t experienced this for yourself I implore you to go out and play these games for yourself. There are plenty out there they I have not even mentioned.
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See what you feel and see if they really line up only as entertainment and not great master pieces that they should be recognized as.
