Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emsy | Hacker News Reader

I find it rather strange that the author asks for open mindedness but seemingly dismisses the whole idea of the cut scene narrative. On the other hand he praises the generated, "natural" narrative of Dwarf Fortress, Brogue and Journey. One of his remarks about Journey is rather interesting:

> When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their presence and introduction. When you communicate with them through singing and body language, all sorts of imagery forms in your mind about the other player’s personality (that’s character development!)

The character development part is a very important part of a narrative, and is in its way, only possible because of other, real players. His other two examples, Brogue and Dwarf Fortress, have huge short comings in this regard. A true, emotionally deep and complex character development and interactions between those characters is only possible if the other characters are played by humans, the characters are predefined or if there would be a sophisticated AI. The first variant is used in Journey, the second is used in "cut scene" type games and the latter is currently not technically possible. So when the author claims:

> At least silent films are excused by their technical limitations – no comparable excuse exists for games.

I take that with a grain of salt. Dwarf Fortress, Brogue and Journey are great examples of how to expand the narrative experience and where games could be heading to in the future. But in my opinion, they are an addition to, rather than a replacement for cut scene narrative games.

I think it's not really about dismissing the idea of the cutscene narrative - cutscenes can certainly be very well done, but a challenge for game developers to develop the medium's own mechanisms for storytelling instead of continually borrowing from film.

The best storytelling we've managed so far is temporarily suspending the "game" part of video games and putting on a Hollywood production. We're not really blazing our own trails, we're just getting better and better at emulating filmmakers.

There are few games that seem to be able to tell a story without completely stopping gameplay or removing agency - the very thing that makes video games video games. Developers realize this limitation, but our only response to it so far is to let the player move the camera a bit and throw in quick-time events (mash X to escape! oh too late, let's try that again!). That's not really agency.

One game that's interesting is an indie game called Kentucky Route Zero - it's a point and click adventure but with level design borrowing heavily from stage theater. It's a nice breath of fresh air, even if it isn't a complete reinvention of in-game storytelling.

I think Bioshock Infinite needs a quick nod for some advances in storytelling. While it's not free from player-control-robbing cutscenes, a huge portion of the game's story is communicated in its environment - something that film is less capable of doing, and games are uniquely positioned to exploit. It's a good example of something playing to the medium's strengths (if only the gameplay was as good as the storyline...)

I think the overarching point is that "storytelling" simply can't work in the same manner as it does in books and movies.

If you tell a story in a cutscene, you then aren't playing a game at that point. Or if you plot out every possible interaction (kind of like The Walking Dead games) you have to limit the outcomes to a manageable level, which hamstrings the gameplay. So what's the solution? The article is arguing that you have to abandon narrative and focus on what you want the player to feel directly.

The problem is that "game literacy" is focused on all the wrong elements. A game like Doom has much better, tighter, more interesting gameplay than something like The Last of Us. (which I still really enjoyed!) And you can be moved by the story, characters etc. from The Last of Us, but it's a lot more like how you feel watching a movie. With Doom, people create their own narratives by interacting with the game, and those narratives have a different kind of power. People still tell stories about playing Doom for the first time 20 years ago with their friends. The objective, I think, is to make a game where those personal stories are directed to achieve a specific effect.

There's one example of this effect that I've read about before. There was a game in the 80s where you play a war game as either the U.S. or Russia. If you play as the U.S., you stockpile arms and try to win the war as you'd expect. But if you play as Russia, you have a whole different set of concerns - starvation, winters, limited resources, aggressive neighboring countries and other factors which lets you experience some of the desperation Russians must have felt during the Cold War. It's a pretty powerful story to tell through gameplay alone, and a story that was told through gameplay without narrative.

You raise a good point, but even if sophisticated AIs are not technically possible yet, predefined characters can still be done well without (ab)using cutscenes.

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