This is an extraordinary time to be interested in games. I believe we're living in a period where the industry is really finding itself as a storytelling medium. The big question of this era in gaming is, I believe, "What kind of stories can you tell with a game?" There are stories in movie form you wouldn't want to tell outside that medium, and there are stories in book form that don't work outside of that. It stands to reason that there are stories, and ways of telling stories, that are unique to games. A very short time ago (well less than a decade) a game's story could be considered to be a movie, interspersed with periods of game-play. While many games still hold to this (and there is nothing wrong with that, yet) it is becoming increasingly clear that the progress of games is now calling for innovations not only in game-play, but in the presentation of the story as well.
This is on the forefront of the minds of both developers and gamers these days, and the flavor du jour seems to be allowing the character to make choices which effect the plot. This is one of the more obvious choices. Interactivity is the defining factor of games, and putting the reins of the story in the hands of the player is an exciting thought. We've been seeing it in some degree for a long time now, particularly in the older Bioware games, but really it can be traced as far back as the original Fallout games. These days, though, it is becoming more and more popular. Games like Alpha Protocol, Mass Effect 2, and Heavy Rain are treating player-driven plot a significant advertising focus. Heavy Rain, in particular, seems to be all about the story, breaking away from the "kill hundreds of bad guys" premise which I've kvetched about earlier. It's a powerful tool, certainly, but is it the one and only future of gaming?
That was a rhetorical question. I wouldn't have asked it if my answer wasn't "probably not."
Another method, one that has largely been overlooked, to storytelling in games has been in play for a long time. Rather than focusing on the interactivity aspect of games to produce a storytelling platform, one can instead focus on the length of games. Games are in a unique position, where they offer up the visual appeal of a film, while taking as long (if not longer) to complete than a book. A really long movie will last three hours, whereas an action game's campaign will last for twelve, if it's short. Roleplaying Games can last upwards of forty hours, and usually are considerably upwards from it. This sort of time frame allows for a good writer to introduce an incredible level of characterization, and to incorporate grandiose themes into his story. It is a distinct style and, to my mind, nowhere is it seen better than in the last two games in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series.
In this regard, Persona 3 is the lesser of the two, but still considerably better than most. Persona games are long as hell, with the main character living a regular high school life, taking tests and joining teams and going to clubs, and then going home and fighting monsters. The relationships the player builds in his regular life have an effect on his ability to fight the monsters in his night life. While P3 certainly uses it's time well in terms of characters, each person the player forms a relationship with being well developed and having a compelling story, the overarching themes of the game are pretty shaky. Each character (appropriately) has their own real theme to deal with, some a bit more compelling than others. One character, for example, deals with sacrifice for the entirety of his story arc. The very idea of claiming victory is, at first, a sacrifice in itself for him, as victory would lead to the loss of his powers and, outside of the character's monster-fighting "night life" this particular character is unremarkable at best. The same character is forced to grow up fairly quickly when another important character makes a considerable sacrifice on his behalf, giving him a more mature outlook, and a sense of what's at stake. This doesn't really have much of a bearing on the overall plot, other than the specific part of the story it is engaged with, but when it is taken in tandem with the several other personal stories of loss and growth that are happening at the same time, the game becomes a fantastic storytelling experience unique to this medium.
Persona 4 does everything 3 does, only better. Characters still have individual plots, but P4 ties them all in with the main storyline through powerful themes, the most prominent of which is "confronting the truth." While P3's larger plot is somewhat unfocused, milling around for the first forty or so hours of the game, P4 keeps things rolling pretty briskly through the whole 60-80 hour experience. The main characters are much more involved in the circumstances, as they take the roles of investigators, trying to discover the cause behind a series of strange events in their small town. As investigators, their job is to uncover the truth, which is usually extremely unpleasant. As a result, the dominant theme is people casting away comforting illusions in favor of a harsher, but inherently noble, truth. This is expressed on several levels, with the actual unraveling of the mystery often taking a back seat to the character's need to confront their own darker traits (and their denial thereof), experiencing personal epiphanies, and coming to accept reality. This carries with it several other related themes, from people taking responsibility for their life, to people coming to peace with their past for the sake of their future. I could talk considerably longer about the specifics of this game's thematic nature but A) that would take forever and B) I've done a good job of avoiding spoilers thus far, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.
My point is that it would be a shame for this brand of storytelling to fall by the wayside. Hopefully game developers will bear in mind that there is no substitute for a well developed set of dynamic characters, and that with 15-100 hours to tell their story, they have no excuse for two dimensional or static characters.
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