The Wu-Tang Secret posted:

Okay I know I made some lovely posts in the other thread but really you should watch all of this guy's videos because he explains why story and setting in video games are important without saying stupid bullshit like "ludonarrative dissonance" and also they're p. funny

The Wu-Tang Secret posted:

Did you watch any of these or not

Gaspar Lewis posted:

I Don't Think You Deserve Redemption, Aiden Pearce

by Patrick Klepek on July 17, 2014

Watch Dogs didn't leave much of an impression during my 20 hours with it, but I can't stop thinking about the game's final choice.

At the end of Watch Dogs, Aiden Pearce and the player are presented with a choice. A man is tied to a chair, openly weeping and begging for his life. Want to pull the trigger? The player can end his life or walk away. The game doesn't comment on your choice, either. After, the interrupted credits keep rolling.

You kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Watch Dogs. Though it's a game themed around hacking and technological subversion, most problems are solved much faster with a bullet. If you run over a civilian in Watch Dogs, it slightly alters how the citizens feel about you, but despite (accidentally) running over many Chicago residents, it didn't impact the game. The act of killing is routine, and Watch Dogs doesn't spend time humanizing the people around you. If anything, Watch Dogs deliberately dangles one-note stereotypes to ensure the bullets are spraying.

That's not true for the character at the end of Watch Dogs, though. The man in the chair is Maurice Vega. Watch Dogs opens with Aiden and his partner, Damien, during a virtual bank heist. But the two stumble upon a mysterious file, which alerts a nearby hacker, and their identities are discovered. Aiden tries to flee with sister, Nicole, and her two children, Lena and Jackson. A hitman, who we eventually learn is Maurice, is sent to take out Aiden. The attack ends up crashing the car, which sends Lena into a coma that she never wakes up from. Watch Dogs then follows Aiden tracking down those responsible for her death.

But Aiden is an rear end in a top hat. I haven't violently disliked a character this much in a long time. Ignoring how the game never, ever tries to explain how Aiden is a master hacker who's also a gun expert, he constantly put his family and the citizens of Chicago in danger. Need to escape a building? Don't worry, just shut down power at a major sports game attended by tens of thousands of people. Cops on your tail? Bah, trigger a bridge while traffic's crossing! Aiden is directly responsible for Lena's death because he's a criminal. As the storyline in Watch Dogs plays out, the cycle repeats. He's responsible for hitmen going after his nephew, and he's responsible for his sister getting kidnapped. Aiden was not randomly targeted by an unjust system; he was being a dick.

Watch Dogs is not a game about players living with consequences, either intended or unintended. You're following a linear story set within an open world, and you're meant to accomplish objective A, B, and C while moving from D to E. Watch Dogs does not give the player many options when it comes to roleplaying. It's possible to make Aiden a bit stealthier and kill slightly fewer people along the way, but it's pointless. Aiden's arc has been determined by the game's writers, and players have little input.

Yet, eventually, you are given a choice. That's what makes the final sequence with Maurice so interesting.

Aiden deserved to be punished for his actions. The ending tries to portray Watch Dogs as Aiden's origin story, events required to produce a hacking superhero that will use his powers for good. But nothing suggests Aiden earned redemption. He's not a hero.

When I play video games, especially ones with player choice, I'm Han Solo, the renegade with a heart of gold. I'm always trying to do the right thing, though unafraid to crack a few eggs along the way. But that wasn't an option in Watch Dogs. Aiden was going to act a certain way, no matter what. Destined to dickitude. Even if your version of Aiden tried to show restraint, that was never, ever reflected in the story. He was always an rear end in a top hat walking around with blinders, oblivious to the chaos created in his wake.

And that's fine! Not every game needs to give players influence over character development, but Watch Dogs doesn't hand over the keys to Aiden's heart and mind until its final curtain call. It's an odd choice. If the game wants to tell the story of an everyman whose noble intentions go horribly awry, do it. (I'm not sure this is even true. The ending's tone points to writers sympathetic to Aiden's decisions.) But have the balls to make Aiden's final choice, too. Asking the player is an M. Night Shyamalan twist, a cop out.

To fully understand what's happening, we need to rewind to its opening moments, too. Watch Dogs begins with Aiden pointing a gun at Maurice, hoping the man will spill who ordered the original hit. Your first action in Watch Dogs is firing a gun. But the game subverts expectations, revealing there's no ammo.

Being confronted with Maurice a second time is Watch Dogs coming full circle. My Han Solo gut was telling me to let Maurice go. As with any criminal conspiracy, he was one pawn among many. Who needs more blood on their hands? But that's not what Aiden would have done. Up until this point, Aiden has killed without a trace of guilt, doubt, or hesitation. Me? I wouldn't pull the trigger. But Aiden would. Aiden wouldn't be able to resist ending the life of a person who had caused him so much pain, misguided or not.

So I made Aiden pull the trigger, and Maurice was dead.

It felt satisfying. Not because I was happy to see Maurice's body slump to the floor, but I'd subverted the game's storytelling. The ending wants you to believe Aiden to be good, and gins up a happy ending. But Aiden doesn't deserve one. He's a bad guy. In trying to do the right thing, he constantly did the opposite.

Screw off, Aiden. Good riddance.

The Wu-Tang Secret posted:

Did you watch any of these or not

Gaspar Lewis posted:

The Wu-Tang Secret posted:

Did you watch any of these or not

mabels big day posted:

i didn't the first time you posted it, because I assumed it would be stupid bullshit. I was right, but despite that I still kinda like it

Buschmaki posted:

I really liked the writing in Toejam and Earl.

The Wu-Tang Secret posted:

It's smart stupid bullshit

swamp waste posted:

why do a lot of people think video game storytelling is going to get Way Better, when it's already so clearly struggling against its limits? is it because the graphics keep getting better and we subconsciously feel like someone is going to invent some awesome story-having technology?

Roger Tangerines posted:

EDIT: /!\ BAN REQUEST DENIED /!\ OOP HAS BEEN RESTORED

Writing!

It's frequently said and widely accepted that the writing in videogames is not as good as that found in a book, or even a film. This is weird, because writing has been a part of the medium since not long after its inception. The original text adventure - Colossal Cave Adventure - was designed in 1976, and is nothing but writing. Even non-text games of that era show elements of writing, even if that writing is limited to the premise - the Space Invaders are invading! (Spoilers: we lose).

So, if the writing in videogames has had the same forty years to improve as the rest of the medium, what's the deal? Why does it still suck? Does it still suck? Can it be as good as a book, or a film? Is it fair to compare these media and say that one is better or worse than the other? There's a lot of room for discussion and opinion here, but in-depth discussions of game writing traditionally don't happen much in the gaming community outside of some specific genres, even though story is an essential component of a huge majority of single-player games. There is, for example, no SA thread specifically dedicated to writing in videogames. What's that? This is one of those? Boy, that's meta.

This thread is for discussion of all issues related to game writing. This is a spectacularly wide-ranging topic, so there should be plenty to talk about. However, it's important to note that everyone has a different depth of knowledge about writing, so with this OP I'll try to provide a bit of a primer so that we're all starting on the same springboard.


What is videogame writing?

This might sound like a stupid question, but it's not. When you hear the word "writing", your mind most likely jumps to one of several concepts. Let's use films as an example. Here are three films notable for good writing: Seven, Inglourious Basterds, and Shaun Of The Dead. All three of these films show evidence of great writing, but it's different in each case. Seven, for example, has an excellent, tightly-written plot which keeps you watching right up until the phenomenal payoff, which sticks with you for a while after the credits have rolled - but the dialogue is often a little stilted. Inglourious Basterds is driven purely by situation, tension and dialogue. It's a slow burn, and the plot actually doesn't really matter all that much, but it's a riveting watch. Shaun Of The Dead's plot and situation are both standard, boring zombie movie fare, but it excels in clever homage, satire, wordplay and witticism.

The point I'm coming around to is that writing isn't narrowly defined. In a story-based videogame, nearly everything you come across has been written and designed. Take the original Tomb Raider. There's plot, and there's dialogue... and then there's that bit where you first slide down the side of the Sphinx and the camera suddenly draws way back and shows you just how tiny you are in comparison to the level. That wasn't a camera glitch, somebody wrote it with the intent of producing that effect.

So, broadest definition: videogame writing is anything that attempts to convey an idea to the player. It's not just the plot of a game, or the dialogue, or the text logs you find - it's all three and more.


Alright, but surely videogame writing is never going to be in the league of, say, a good book, or a movie, or a Japanese comic about sexy witch schoolgirls.

This misconception is older than Grandma's toaster and we need to stop saying it, or it might come true.

The fact is that we've been saying this about every new form of media since the Egyptians decided to try staining words onto paper instead of hammering them into the wall. When films came onto the scene, people lamented that they were intrinsically less worthwhile than books. For years people thought television was the idiot's opiate, and some still do. People thought that comic books were vulgar and couldn't be used to tell a story worth reading. We've been wrong every time and we're wrong this time.

Comparing games to films is like comparing films to books. It's a fool's game. Both films and books can have fantastic writing, but you can't compare them with each other directly because they're a different medium and must use different methods to convey their stories. You've probably heard the phrase "the language of cinema" - the way in which films are shot to convey atmospheres and emotions that wouldn't be possible in, for example, a stage play, or even a book. This language has been developed and improved continuously throughout the history of cinema, and we're still discovering new techniques and storytelling methods. Nowadays, claiming a film couldn't ever be as good as a book would strike many people as a silly comparison - film is a totally different art form.

Videogames are the same. They have their own language, which is still being developed. There is stuff that they can do that films and books can't (provide you with a choice! Ask for your opinion! Judge you by your actions!), and there is stuff that films and books can do that videogames usually can't (control pacing! Dictate the opinions of the protagonist! Be the subject of an interesting conversation with your dad!). Writers are still learning how to do things in this medium, and it's only lately that the audience for games with real, worthwhile story is starting to emerge. Now, with the advent of Steam and the indie game, more and more experimentation is being done in this art form. We've already seen major improvements in game storytelling in the past three years. In the next ten, we're going to see this improvement continue, just like it has with every other form of media. And one day we'll get our 2001: A Space Odyssey, our Watchmen, or our Breaking Bad. We're on our way already.


OK, I'm convinced by your totally bulletproof argument. But I buy all the most popular videogames, and the stories all suck!

Well, yeah, to an extent that's true. At the moment (and this is changing, if slowly), the big games that you've seen advertised on TV are mostly about spectacle, not story (and it's worthwhile to remember that spectacle isn't a bad thing). But recently, good writing has become much more important to media consumers in general - witness the success of True Detective, House Of Cards, and Fargo. This is already starting to bleed over into mainstream videogames, even if for now it's just casting Kevin Spacey in the new CoD.

But yeah, at the moment, if you want good stories in games, more often than not you'll have to go looking for them.


So, what should I look out for if I want to see some different ways in which games can have good writing?

(This section is painfully incomplete because I am but a man. I will add good suggestions to this list as they are suggested and discussed in the thread.)

Gone Home - If nothing else, this game certainly provokes a lot of debate. In Gone Home, you explore an empty house which is packed with detail - most everything can be picked up and examined, and further informs the story that you're being told. I like Gone Home, because it's a great example of a storytelling method that only videogames are capable of.

Spec Ops: The Line - Another divisive game. Spec Ops starts off like any mediocre shooty war game, and then yanks the rug out from under you a couple of hours in and forces you to rethink things.

The Stanley Parable - I'm just gonna stop saying that games are divisive because it seems like every game with a focus on writing splits people right down the middle. The Stanley Parable can be described as a collection of surreal comedic vignettes which explore and send up the mechanics and idiosyncracies of videogames. There's a lot to discover and think about, and behind the jokes the points being made are often pretty clever, even if the vignettes can be a little hit-and-miss.

The Last Of Us - A good example of a well-written triple-A game. The Last Of Us is a solid enough action game, but the real draw is the development of the interpersonal relationship between Joel and Ellie, which is continually well-explored and has a powerful payoff.

Mass Effect Trilogy - Whether Mass Effect is well-written is very debatable, but it's worth playing because the sheer amount of writing over the course of the three games is impressive, and keeping it reactive and influencable by the player (to whatever extent) is an impressive technical achievement.

Alpha Protocol - The plot is your standard Hollywood spy thriller, but anyone who's played Alpha Protocol can tell you just how good the writing is. The whole game is massively reactive and Mike's decisions and attitudes can dramatically affect the outcome of the game. Every major character is well-realised with full backstories that you can discover, read up on, and even exploit.

The Walking Dead - Some of the best videogame storytelling ever produced, Telltale's five-part Walking Dead series is the perfect zombie game - one with no shooting at all (well, almost none). Instead, the focus is on survival, decision-making and human relationships. The second season is in progress, and I haven't played it, but the first is almost universally critically acclaimed. Warning: this game will make you feel like poo poo and break your heart.


Anything else I can check out?

If you'd like to listen to videogame designers talk about writing, you could do worse than to listen to Idle Thumbs. The podcast is focused on general game design rather than specifically writing, but the cast members have worked on games such as The Walking Dead and Gone Home. It's also just a really good podcast about videogames in general.


Seems a bit late to abandon this Q&A conceit now. Could you wrap up the OP somehow?

Alright, I'm just about done, so now I hand over to everyone else. This thread is for discussion of writing in games, and games with good or bad writing. Basically if you can take the words "games" and "writing" and mash 'em together in a fun-sounding sentence, you can discuss that.

That said, this is a topic that tends to incite lovely argument so there need to be a couple of ground rules.

• Don't just poo poo all over games you don't like - if you call something bad, justify it properly. We can call this the "Gone Home" rule. It's fine to criticise a game, but you need to qualify it with a good reason. What, specifically, didn't you like about it? What parts didn't work for you? If a game is divisive, that means some people really like it, so don't come in and say it sucks without qualifying, or you're just going to wind people up and cause a lovely argument.
  
• Don't fakepost - People have all sorts of weird, lovely opinions about videogames, so don't assume that you can post something incredibly dumb on purpose, and people will understand it and laugh. Someone will take you seriously and there will be an lovely argument.
  
• Don't get angry - you're a grown-up for christ's sake
  
• Crazy Catch-All: Don't start lovely arguments - Just... don't. You know how not to do that, right? Before you post anything, ask yourself the question "Am I starting a lovely argument?" and if you are don't post. Remember your ABC. Always Be Checking-whether-you-are-starting-a-lovely-argument-and-not-posting-if-you-are.
  

I'll add more to this OP as needed and suggested. Please suggest good links if you know em, or anything important you feel I've missed, or disagree with anything I've written. Otherwise, discuss away!

swamp waste posted:

why do a lot of people think video game storytelling is going to get Way Better

Ekster posted:

I love games where you need to kill dozens of mooks along the way to the bad guy and then a ~moral dilemma~ comes up that boils down to kill him or not

it's like killing nazi soldiers left and right and getting to choose to let hitler live or not at the end

Ekster posted:

I love games where you need to kill dozens of mooks along the way to the bad guy and then a ~moral dilemma~ comes up that boils down to kill him or not

it's like killing nazi soldiers left and right and getting to choose to let hitler live or not at the end

01011001 posted:

who thinks this

swamp waste posted:

basically everyone who writes about it who isn't a game developer

Falsum posted:

The problem with most of the people who want games to be about the story is that they think the gameplay part of the game is something they have to deal with instead of something that is an essential part of a video game.

01011001 posted:

dehumanization of the hundreds of faceless mooks between yourself and the enemy's commander, who is himself allowed to be treated narratively as a realized person, is vitally important to not forcing the player to put any thought into the actual process of most of the game but still allowing them to consider it "deep" or "meaningful" at the end of the day

chumbler posted:

I long for the day when the medium as a whole can achieve at least the standards for writing, character personality, and portrayal of emotions found in the average Kirby game. This is not entirely an unserious wish.

Action Tortoise posted:

Is Dark Souls really deep? It's intentionally vague and it works because the story's not so in your face all the time and filling in the blanks is a lot more interesting than having them spelled out for you.

SunAndSpring posted:

Well I dunno about calling it deep. Usually there's a deep meaning behind it all, you know? But Dark Souls's message is basically just, "wow, Anal Lando really loving sucks"

Effectronica posted:

Well, yeah, people usually refer to meaning/theme or whatever, but it can also refer to depth of character or (ugh) setting etc.

SunAndSpring posted:

True. I just think games don't do themes very well. They can do motifs well, as Dark Souls proved: fire and gloom and despair are all around your sorry rear end in that game. But themes? I think Fallout 3 tried to do a theme about sacrifice and fatherhood and looked how that turned out.

SunAndSpring posted:

Well I dunno about calling it deep. Usually there's a deep meaning behind it all, you know? But Dark Souls's message is basically just, "wow, Anal Lando really loving sucks"

SunAndSpring posted:

True. I just think games don't do themes very well. They can do motifs well, as Dark Souls proved: fire and gloom and despair are all around your sorry rear end in that game. But themes? I think Fallout 3 tried to do a theme about sacrifice and fatherhood and looked how that turned out.

Effectronica posted:

That's what depth refers to in storytelling. Deep stories are ones that don't tell you everything, whether it's what the author's trying to communicate, why the characters did what they did, what really happened in that forest, etc. They leave it up to people to come to their own conclusion.

SunAndSpring posted:

Well I dunno about calling it deep. Usually there's a deep meaning behind it all, you know? But Dark Souls's message is basically just, "wow, Anal Lando really loving sucks"

StashAugustine posted:

new vegas had a pretty consistent theme of the new world recreating the mistakes of the old

StandardVC10 posted:

Each of the factions also has a motif related to how we think we'd react to an apocalyptic-scale tragedy IMO

The Fiends are hedonistic lawlessness, the NCR and the Enclave represent a desire for continuity with past institutions/traditions, the Followers are trying to atone for the sin of ending the world, the Legion and the Brotherhood of Steel are about "never again" though in rather different ways.