02.23.07
Getting Railroaded
This came up as a Google Quote of the Day a couple days ago:
Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.
--Penn Jillette
Aside from the wisdom of it being, well, Penn Jillette, he raises an interesting point. Having control over a story does sort of ruin the story, as you’re basically dictating to the storyteller how you think he should proceed. There is a difference, however, between dictating to the storyteller and having the storyteller adapt to the listener’s wishes.
Let’s take two quick and dirty examples, Final Fantasy VII and Wing Commander. Yeah, disparate genres and different games, I know; but the fact is, both do the storyline thing in different ways. FF7’s story is rigid and inflexible. Cloud always hands over the Black Materia, Aeris always runs off to the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth always manages to summon Meteor. Nothing the player does can alter this progression. The player is still ‘turning pages’– that is, the level grind and dungeon completions push the story along– but ultimately it’s still a book with one plot and one ending. In Wing Commander, the player’s ability alters the storyline to an extent that there could be several different outcomes. If a specific capital ship isn’t destroyed, for example, it could turn the tide for the enemy and branch the storyline away, ultimately resulting in the war being won by the Kilrathi instead of the Terrans. This creates confusion in the inevitable event of a sequel, because then you have to dictate to the player which of the endings was the “real” one, possibly alienating the player who worked hard to get a difficult, yet non-canonical, ending.
Which is better? It’s hard to say. Certainly Japanese RPGs have taken the first approach, with multiple endings being relegated to how quickly the player decides to defeat the final boss (Chrono series) or how much of the storyline they uncovered before the game ends (Dead Rising). Western games take the second approach by and large, allowing the player to side with the enemy (Jedi Academy) or to take an unconventional route to completing the main challenge (Maniac Mansion). Nobody can actually say which one has sold better because there are always other factors involved, and using sales as a measure of success isn’t always reliable (particularly when trying to analyze games as art). Both approaches have merits and flaws.
If I were to make a game (which isn’t entirely unlikely– shhh, you didn’t hear that), I would probably try to blend the two approaches. Certainly a game has to have a set progression common to all iterations of its storyline (ie a core set of levels/events that build up to the final conflict). I would probably have the player branch the storyline without actually knowing that he or she is doing so, and gently rein the player in if he or she is straying too far from the core story. Let’s say that a situation comes up where the player has three ways to complete a task, and has a party member strongly opposed to one of those ways. The player is free to choose any of those ways he or she sees fit, but if the path is chosen that the party member does not like, the party member may abandon the player– or, more dramatically, sabotage the player’s attempt to accomplish the task that way, revealing more of the story and putting the player on the ‘right track’ without being heavy-handed. Naturally, if the player arrives at that juncture with a different party member who has no qualms about that particular path, then the player can pursue that option, but possibly not another one which the original party member would have approved of.
It’s all very theoretical and nebulous, of course, but it is something that might be worth looking into if I were to script a game.
Inconsequential Update: 80,000 words with 15 scenes left to go. One more to hit my goal, but like I said, I’m taking this wave of creativity as far as it can go. Of course, the fact that I managed a good deal on a slightly used MacBook (read: as a gift, it never left the box as the recipient already has an MB Pro, so he sold it to me) means that a) I’ll likely be on such a binge of writing that I’ll get a lot more done this weekend, as opposed to relaxing and watching a movie as was my original plan, and b) I have an equal chance of just slacking off and staring at Dashboard widgets for the next 48 hours. Ah well.