On Monday, April 22, 2013
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.
