This Saturday, at PAX East, I had the pleasure of attending the “Plot vs Play” panel, moderated by Joystiq’s Ben Gilbert and Kotaku‘s own Jason Schreier. The panel brought together three developers who have all worked on landmark, story-driven games to discuss their differing philosophies on the presence and purpose of story in gaming.
I could tell there was a sex scene brewing in The Witcher 2 when Geralt of Rivia and his comely redheaded sorceress companion Triss stumbled upon this ancient Elven bathhouse, and I wasn’t planning on sharing the resulting NSFW video. Then Triss tapped into the vast mystical forces of the universe to remove her clothing.
Objection is a new section where we debate hot topics in gaming, and leave it you guys to talk it out in the comments section. The first topic we’re tackling is Video Game narrative, and joining us we have James O’ Connor, a regular contributor to Hyper, Games Editor on Mania and PhD candidate currently writing a thesis on, you guessed it, video game narrative.
Dragon Age 2 is the latest story driven RPG from Bioware, and is due for release in March 2011. Earlier this week we managed to spend some time with the game. We took the opportunity to quiz producer Heather Rabatich on the importance of story, and why Bioware is one of the few studios that truly allows writers to drive the development process.
Calling it “the straightest Grand Theft Auto ever,” largely for effect, PopMatters’ G. Christopher Williams says The Ballad of Gay Tony hews to some hetero-driven crime-novel representations of both sexualities, but in the end is about much deeper themes.
Recent Persona games have become cult hits thanks largely to their gameplay framework — traditional Japanese RPG leveling mechanics reframed around personal improvement, social relationships and the concept of the self.
Gamasutra has a fun essay up from Ben Schneider, formerly of Iron Lore Entertainment and currently narrative designer at Big Huge Games, on dialogue in games — and the challenges of getting it right. Schneider isn’t calling for a removal of longer dialogues, but pointing out that short dialogue can function better than its longer cousin in many situations: creating ambiance in the background or delivering information (without interrupting or hindering gameplay) when in the forefront. Short dialogue should be like poetry, and poetry is ‘a powerful thing’:
The key, of course, is to keep dialog short where it counts. And the hard part is in knowing when that is. Dialog that’s in the environment, tied to gameplay mechanics, or that plays during game action really needs to stay short, clear, and direct. But that is never an excuse for lower standards of writing.
Very short dialog (under six seconds, averaging two) is critical for information that needs to be digested instantaneously. Merely short dialog (let’s say as long as 15 seconds, but averaging closer to eight) has the flexibility of carrying a lot more information and character, but can’t reliably be used while the player is fully engaged in intense, focused play.
Obviously, the pressure is off when you’ve got the player’s attention and they are largely passive, such as in cinematics, dialog trees, and when they can safely listen to narration over their current task — that is, for untimed puzzles and nonverbal, visually centered challenges (as in Portal, for example). Still — I would argue that there are precious few cases where a single line of dialog should run over 20 or so seconds.
He pulls out some good examples of what works and what doesn’t in many situations, and it’s a nice meditation on the role of those short little snips in games — pretty necessary, but pretty hard to get right at times (pedantic prose is, after all, easier to write than compelling poetry).
Ode to Short Dialog: Reconsidering the Sound Bite [Gamasutra]
Danc at Lost Garden has an interesting post up on themes in games and the effect on game design: while there are definite reasons for the same types of themes and aesthetics popping up in games over and over again, a careful balance needs to be struck between ‘skinning’ themes and mechanics and putting coherent game play above it all. It’s better that a game ‘reads’ badly from a literary (narrative) standpoint, but makes sense in terms of game play:
The term ‘melodrama’ is a somewhat loaded term — ask a few people if X media counts as melodrama, and you’re likely to get a variety of answers. Michael Abbott discusses melodrama in one accepted context (a definition that I would quibble with based on my own background dealing with ‘melodramatic representation’) in reference to games. Yes, we do do melodrama — everything from GTA to Metal Gear to Final Fantasy plays with at least one interpretation of melodrama:
