Plotting the game: what's your view on quality of writing in adventure games?
 

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L to R - Fahrenheit, Missing: Since January, and Moment Of Silence.

Let's be honest here. Many of you are veterans of adventure games and have played a huge amount of them in the past, oh, 5-20 years? In consideration of the current thread on the narrative handling and exposition of Dreamfall, I ask the following questions.

How do you feel adventure game writers are handling the stories in their games? Do you think there's room for improvement? If so, what needs to be improved? Are the stories fine as they are, or even excellent as they are? If you feel they're fine as is, why? Do you think they're better than stories from other game types? Why? Any examples of great adventure game writing, and the reasons for which you think it's great?

If you play games of other genres - role playing games, action/adventures, first person shooters, strategy games - how do their stories (handling, narrative, writing talent) compare with 'bona fide' adventure game stories? Any examples of writing from other genres you would present to adventure game writers as a challenge to beat? Why do you think it's better than what you've experienced in adventure games?

And how do you feel about how the stories are told in terms of gameplay? Do you like being a passive participant, solving one puzzle after another to be rewarded with more plot through an unplayable cutscene? Or do you prefer to be much more actively involved in how the story is revealed?

I think it's a mistake to equate writing with story. The story is pretty much the sequence of events in the game, the premise, and I guess to some extent the characters whereas writing is concerned primarily with the use of language.

I personally revile all this emphasis on storytelling and view the story as just one small part of a larger palette (including visual style, audio design, game rules, puzzles, game environment, writing, etc) a game designer may use to express his vision. As such, the story isn't something I particularly notice, unless it's glaringly inadequate, so I can't comment on the relative quality of stories in adventure games.

Tim Schafer's games, particularly Grim Fandango, are the obvious examples of great adventure game writing. In Grim Fandango what distinguishes the writing is its wit, the way it provides effective characterisation without being obvious or unnatural (see: The Longest Journey, and to a lesser extent, early in Dreamfall for examples of what not to do here) and most importantly, and most difficult to give an example of or explain, the general elegant use of language.

As for cutscenes (which even Schafer is guilty of overusing, though unlike a lot of designers I think he realises it's a problem), I wish they were wiped out completely. At worst they just demonstrate the failed movie director complex so many designers seem to have, and at best still come across are a lazy way of moving the game forward or providing the player with a reward. I should clarify that by cutscenes I mean entirely non-interactive sequences, like intro and ending movies; there may still be a place for short scripted events (e.g. Call of Duty, Half-Life, even if they could be refined a fair bit) or what I call "interactive cutscenes", the only example of which I can think of is Bone: The Great Cow Race's dream sequence, which I thought was done in quite a novel way.

I don't mind the occasional cutscene as reward or to reveal more of the story in a cinematic way. I think in the game I'm working on we're trying for about 5 little cutscenes, but all at what we consider important parts.

I think cinema should be kept in the cinema. (Not to slight your approach; for the current evolutionary state of games they're an imperfect but necessary solution in some cases.)

Well, so much in adventure games is talking and storyline anyway, so by "cinematic" I simply mean...spice things up a bit. Rather than just showing two people standing still with text coming out of their heads, heh.

A large problem with games in general is the sloppy way in which the story is presented. It's often a challenge to simply track the progression of the narrative. At the worst moments, characters are introduced for the first time and there are numerous moments where you sit back and mutter: “Who?” It's often necessary to re-play the entire game before you've gotten a handle on the plot. Admittedly, this is a problem in cinema too, but at least you're simply watching in this instance and can pay full attention to the plot, instead of being required to indulge in ill-conceived gameplay portions too.

I think Junkface is absolutely right here. For me, quality writing can elevate any adventure game story, and I think the same is true for a lot of people. A common complaint about Monkey Island 2 - as an example - is that it's essentially one long set of fetch-and-carry missions. The story isn't especially original or compelling by itself. But it's the way the characters in the game are written and the style of exposition that makes the game feel special.

I'm less comfortable giving an example of the opposite case - where poor writing drags down an otherwise good story - but The Moment of Silence strikes me as one such example, although I must admit I haven't played the whole thing.

Personally, I think writing and storytelling are much better outside of the adventure game genre. You can narrate a lot in adventure games, but it's usually at the expense of puzzles and free exploration. Some other genres, like first-person shooters and role-playing games seem better suited to telling grand tales.

Furthermone, some of the best adventure games that I have enjoyed have had very thin stories that can more or less be ignored (e.g. the entire Myst series, Aura, RHEM, etc.). Grandiose stories are not an essential ingredient in adventure games.

Just because a story is told on a grand scale doesn't make it better. A story in an action game may give the impression that it's much more dynamic, but a lot of this comes down to the visceral nature of those genres. Many of these stories are stories of ideas or the world setting itself and much less about the characters. Adventures tend to concentrate on stories about the characters, so even when you have a story with a grand scale setting, it can feel much more personal because you're working with the characters in a more sedate manner.

The best storytelling is about drama through character conflict and many adventures have a weakness in this area, particularly as many NPCs are simply too helpful to provide this conflict. Action games are all about conflict, so if a game manages to bring this into the story side of the game it's easy to think that it's a good story.

Sometimes, when we particularly enjoy a game it can distort our appreciation of the story. I really enjoyed playing Final Fantasy 7 and thought the story was okay. However, when you put such a story into a different context - such as FF7 Advent Children - you realise how weak the story really is.

We're all still learning how to tell good interactive stories and while there are elements that we can make high quality (dialogue, for instance), I think it will be a long time still before everything comes together in a truly satisfying way.

Frankly, I think adventure games have the best writing of any genre overall. I honestly can't think of a game outside of the adventure genre that can compete with a Gabriel Knight game, The Last Express, Grim Fandango, etc. First-person shooters can have really cool, immersive stories and environments, but generally lack characterization. RPGs are excessively expositional when it comes to the writing, and I'm getting tired of heroes with amnesia and saving the entire world. Jade Empire is a game that many people seem to love, but I can't stand the storytelling or dialogue in that game. It's a prime example of terrible writing. This is what Jade Empire's dialogue sounds like, and unfortunately the same can be said for most RPGs:

CHARACTER 1: So, how are you today?

CHARACTER 2: What? In the twelve years we've known each other going to this school after your father died and my mother passed on, you've never asked me how I'm doing. Are you ok?

CHARACTER 1: Just thought I'd ask.

CHARACTER 2: Well, what's next? Are you going to ask me about Sensei WooShoo? I can tell you he's 89 years old and fifty years ago he defeated Willomanchu, the great evil being that was controlling our lands. But the legends say he will awaken again!

UGH....

The writing in a Metal Gear Solid game isn't much better, if at all. It always reminds me far too much of a cheesy anime...

So yeah, I vote for adventures as having the best writing in gaming.

Importantly, FPS' and the like don't NEED good stories to be good, per se. Adventures don't have that luxury - sadly, there are few of the genre that can boast to house a gripping tale.

Last time I checked there weren't that many decent writers involved in the gaming industry. So...



Even if teams suddenly started to hire writers with (most likely) zero experience in making GAMES ...

...something entirely scripted can hardly ever match anything that's happening directly between you, the player and the game. That said, for what it's worth, "Planescape: Torment" (here we go again...) still has the best pieces of interactive dialogue (thanks to its sophisticated scripting) I've ever seen in a commercial game. :)

Junkface, I'm glad that you feel that way. I have been saying for a long time that the constant emphasis on "storytelling" in videogames (mostly RPG's and adventures of course) is not the direction things should be going.

I despise the Longest Journey for this. The interactivity is nil, and instead of gameplay we get drawn-out half-hour "cinematic" (read: dialogue with a static screen) sequences.

I played Monkey Island 2 and TLJ at about the same time. MI2 is by far the better game, and is everything that TLJ is not. Another poster in this thread mentioned that people complain of MI2 being a bunch of "fetch quests" with no strong story. The funny thing is that MI2 is loaded with puzzles and has more actual gameplay than almost any other adventure game I've played. People don't like it because they prefer an interactive storybook.

Speaking of Monkey Island - I think in terms of interactive storytelling the very first chapter in the very first Monkey Island game offers the truly greats of that series. Break into the Guvner's mansion! Go on a treasure hunt! Battle pirates! And most of all:

DO IT ALL ON YOUR OWN! Sexciting! Sigh, gaming kicked serious butt in 1990, didn't it? ;)

This is among the reasons I've stepped back a little in my approach to developing games. In terms of gameplay, many of the adventure games in the early to mid 1990s were among the best created. While there have been great advences in storytelling, it seems as though this has been to the detriment of gameplay in many cases. It's almost like we've allowed storytelling (as well as art and technology) to get ahead of us when we're not really ready.

Honestly I think there's a lot of potential for great narrative effect not only in adventure games, but in many other types of games as well. But that doesn't necessarily mean that ALL games should have stories per se, there are games that don't need them. But I'm more interested in those games that do work with narrative, so let's talk about that.

The thing is (and some of you seem to agree) that there needs to be an improvement in the quality of the writing. I also think originality is sorely lacking. But maybe it has to do with more with the constraints of the media - the gameplay, the technology, the way that WE gamers perceive how narrative is handled in terms of our expectations. We want a story to 'behave' a certain way because we've been so used to our games behaving a certain way.

In other words, the medium seems to dictate how narrative is formed. Does that mean there is only one way of telling a story in a game? And must we follow that way and forget other possibilities? Should it just be all about solving a puzzle just to watch a cutscene? Should it just be only about reading one text exposition after another (i.e., diary entries, letters, etc.), or passively watching your character conversing with an NPC? What other ways are there to unfold story in ways we've never experienced before, beyond what we originally thought were the limits of the medium?

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Gabriel Knight 3, and Silent Hill 2.

I thought GK3 was one of the best - finest! - handling of story I've ever seen in any game type, not just adventure games. It presented story and characters in surprisingly subtle ways, thanks to excellent writing, voice acting, and to an extent, direction. Another one very good handling of story, though imperfect, was Silent Hill 2. The story there seemed to just ooze out more in atmosphere, and that, I think, is a very tricky feat. The writing was just typically cliche but there are definitely other ways to communicate the story to us, to tell the story to us - characters' facial expressions and body language, environments, art direction, sound, visuals, and even the force feedback in the controller.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I question how well GK3 actually told its story. The villian was obvious as soon as you met him, the whole end of the game was incredibly rushed, and the backstory explanation was fairly pathetic - one brief cutscene before the final section of the game. It's not a bad game by any means, but I always felt that the story paled in comparison to either of the previous games in the series.

By the way, I'm really glad that nobody has actually directly compared game writing to film writing yet. Genuinely :).

What standards are you using to critique the writing and exposition in GK3?

Like I stated, many game stories and how they're written are invariably cliched. Freshness and originality are quite rare. Besides, this medium is still relatively young and underdeveloped (30 years) as an industry, and in many ways such as an art form.

That's unrealistic of you. It's perfectly natural for anyone to compare similarities between media, so why should we roll our eyes to the inevitable comparison of games to film? It's the main frame of reference we have precisely because that's how we operate, considering how 'young' video games are as a developing medium, we need to bounce it off what we're already familiar with to gain some kind of context. The same thing happened between motion pictures and the stage performance, between motion pictures and literature, between records and live musical performances.

So why avoid it? If anything it's very healthy and opens up possibilities to delve more deeply in how we perceive our media and in what ways and in how we can talk about it.

I just genuinely don't think that it's a useful comparison to complain that a dozen hours of video game writing isn't up to the standards of a two-hour film with completely different pacing. Which is why I'm glad nobody has tried to use that argument ;).

No one's stated yet that games can never be as good as films. The thing you're assuming is that we would automatically use the standards of films and force them onto games. What I'm instead thinking is how games explore narrative, and whether they use conventional filmic methods, or whether they use methods that perhaps films are unable to because they're not interactive like games and don't usually operate that way.

To force filmic standards and conventions onto games, I think, isn't necessarily wrong, and it may even create an interesting game. It depends on what the games writer and designer does with it. Naturally there are ways to convey narative in games that films never can, and that's great, too.