I often feel like games (videogames included) often get a lot of praise for their stories when they simply manage to make sense. Which is not exactly a high bar.
Don't often play games that have stories beyond theme, but I often find them forgettable, for some obvious reasons. I think games that understand storytelling best are the ones that demonstrate how the playing of the game is the narrative.
One of my best gaming experiences was playing Fury of Dracula (a sloppily designed game, but I think this sloppiness allows for emergent narrative). As Dracula, most of my game was spent trying to hide from the hunters, and if they found me, my goal was to kill them. But because so much of the game as Dracula is listening to the other players discuss where they think you are, sometimes guessing correctly and then being convinced to look somewhere else, you feel a lot of tension whose only release is a tense battle based on rock, paper, scissor rules.
Anyway, the game ended with a fight at dawn between Dracula and Van Helsing after Nina correctly guessed that I had used one of my secret powers as a misdirection. The combat itself was a tense match of psychological warfare! And though I was killed and the hunters won, the entire experience was so intensely gratifying that I've been chasing that narrative high in games since then.
I haven't read a word of video game journalism in years, but, when I did, I felt the "story" bar was super low. "Having a great story" usually meant "had a plot and two characters with some personality traits." I always felt these "stories" were graded on a curve because people didn't want to admit that their hobby or job just wasn't producing anything of value on this front. It's weird. I know these people are praising "guy collects ten things" for its story, then watching a movie or reading a book with a far deeper storyline and thinking it sucks.
I agree with the emergent storytelling piece. I've been playing Final Girl, which is sort of an amalgamation of horror movie tropes. It doesn't tell a story in the way that a book or movie does, but it connects the mechanics with theme in some pretty fun ways. You can sort of make your own story about what happens depending on what's going on on the board.
I think emergent storytelling really is the powerful tool that games have. Videogames keep trying to become movies, for example, and they usually end up being bad ones, and all the emphasis on making a game into a movie often means the gameplay itself suffers.
But gameplay is the one tool games have that other media doesn't! I also think it's why flavor text in board games is often far more interesting than a supplementary 30 page booklet explaining the world, the story, etc.
In Final Girl, an event card gave me a "boyfriend." If the boss killed my boyfriend, I got double the amount of time on my next turn (ie, the move slows down after a dramatic event). I, of course, walked my boyfriend straight to the boss and let him get killed, even though I have multiple defense cards in my hand. This is hilarious, and way better storytelling than any "story based" video or board game I've ever played.
I had a similar wonderful experience once playing 'Mansions of Madness' that I feel I have been chasing ever since. How much comes down to an alchemical combination of gameplay, interpersonal dynamics in the specfic group, and chance, however?
Group dynamics are, like, half of the boardgame experience. That's why finding a good group is so precious.
And I think chance is a big part too, which is why sloppily designed games seem to have more of this emergent narrative.
A game like Risk, for example, can have the story of a single soldier holding back 20. But a game like Terra Mystica is unlikely to build to any kind of story. Though some tightly designed games allow for this, like Root or Great Western Trail, but not in the same way.
It is quite odd that I've been so fixated on story games since I was a kid since I think such a tiny percentage of them are truly successful at both... out of the adventure game classics, probably only 'Grim Fandango' has a story strong enough to be straightforwardly adapted into a successful film... but the puzzles are much more rudimentary and frustrating than they were in, say, 'Day of the Tentacle'.
Some other 90s/ early 00s adventure games manage to gesture towards an involving story through cribbing from myths and legends - 'King's Quest' 5 & 6, 'The Neverhood' and 'The Longest Journey' stir memories and associations from half-membered Greco-Roman myth, the Bible, world creation stories etc. to give the impression of a much more unified story than actually exists within the game.
From the classic period, 'The Last Express' might be the only graphical adventure game that I think is on a par - story wise - with decent film and literature while still maintaining a high quality of gameplay. And even then it's on the level of a lesser Agatha Christie but with more geo-political intrigue.
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So, that's adventure games. In terms of RPGs, obviously the likes of 'Balder's Gate' are generic in terms of storytelling. Outside of JRPGs, there's 'Planescape' and 'Disco Elysium', separated in time by two decades. Both feature remarkable stretches of writing and nuanced characterisation... but they still cleave to the inherently broken D&D stat mechanics. I'd go to bat for both of them, but their gameplay is inelegant at best.
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I feel like the uncanny stylisation of horror can paper over a lot of flaws. 'Pathologic' and 'Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs' are both janky and fruity as hell, but somehow that adds not lessens the experience of both. But I also appreciate 'Pathologic' is fairly unplayable in many respects and that 'AAMfP' is not much of a game and is only going to appeal if you have a high tolerance for purple prose (which I largely do!)
...
Sometimes I feel I should just give up the persuit and stick to the elegant brilliance of the likes of 'Stephen's Sausage Roll' and other puzzle games. But I know I'll never give up on the dream of the integrated narrative-gameplay experience of the ideal adventure game or RPG that exists in my head :p
Have you been playing it through on your own? My partner and I managed a couple of sessions, but it look us long enough to set up (and put away) we didn't get very far. We both have full time jobs and my partner has kids - there simply aren't enough hours in the day!
I also can't help but think that it's the kind of gameplay system which the automatism enabled by videogames is hugely beneficial... 'Sunless Sea/ Skies' has a similar mechanic of exploring different islands while managing resources, but has the benefit of not having to work out all the stats yourself //and// is written by some of the best interactive fiction luminaries like Emily Short. I actually think text games are still more successful at combining narrative and gameplay than most other videogames.
In terms of tabletop boards/ boardgames, I've always found thar combat seriously undercuts my enjoyment of D&D but I think they're well integrated in some single-session games like 'Fiasco'... though I suppose one might argue that 'Fiasco' is not much of a game.
I finished a campaign on my own. Didn't worry about setup and teardown because I left it on my table. I actually skipped the last boss battle because I was so tired of combat at that point.
I often feel like games (videogames included) often get a lot of praise for their stories when they simply manage to make sense. Which is not exactly a high bar.
Don't often play games that have stories beyond theme, but I often find them forgettable, for some obvious reasons. I think games that understand storytelling best are the ones that demonstrate how the playing of the game is the narrative.
One of my best gaming experiences was playing Fury of Dracula (a sloppily designed game, but I think this sloppiness allows for emergent narrative). As Dracula, most of my game was spent trying to hide from the hunters, and if they found me, my goal was to kill them. But because so much of the game as Dracula is listening to the other players discuss where they think you are, sometimes guessing correctly and then being convinced to look somewhere else, you feel a lot of tension whose only release is a tense battle based on rock, paper, scissor rules.
Anyway, the game ended with a fight at dawn between Dracula and Van Helsing after Nina correctly guessed that I had used one of my secret powers as a misdirection. The combat itself was a tense match of psychological warfare! And though I was killed and the hunters won, the entire experience was so intensely gratifying that I've been chasing that narrative high in games since then.
I haven't read a word of video game journalism in years, but, when I did, I felt the "story" bar was super low. "Having a great story" usually meant "had a plot and two characters with some personality traits." I always felt these "stories" were graded on a curve because people didn't want to admit that their hobby or job just wasn't producing anything of value on this front. It's weird. I know these people are praising "guy collects ten things" for its story, then watching a movie or reading a book with a far deeper storyline and thinking it sucks.
I agree with the emergent storytelling piece. I've been playing Final Girl, which is sort of an amalgamation of horror movie tropes. It doesn't tell a story in the way that a book or movie does, but it connects the mechanics with theme in some pretty fun ways. You can sort of make your own story about what happens depending on what's going on on the board.
I think emergent storytelling really is the powerful tool that games have. Videogames keep trying to become movies, for example, and they usually end up being bad ones, and all the emphasis on making a game into a movie often means the gameplay itself suffers.
But gameplay is the one tool games have that other media doesn't! I also think it's why flavor text in board games is often far more interesting than a supplementary 30 page booklet explaining the world, the story, etc.
In Final Girl, an event card gave me a "boyfriend." If the boss killed my boyfriend, I got double the amount of time on my next turn (ie, the move slows down after a dramatic event). I, of course, walked my boyfriend straight to the boss and let him get killed, even though I have multiple defense cards in my hand. This is hilarious, and way better storytelling than any "story based" video or board game I've ever played.
Quantic Dream's games have gotten worse and worse the more cinematic and the less janky they get, for instance.
I had a similar wonderful experience once playing 'Mansions of Madness' that I feel I have been chasing ever since. How much comes down to an alchemical combination of gameplay, interpersonal dynamics in the specfic group, and chance, however?
Group dynamics are, like, half of the boardgame experience. That's why finding a good group is so precious.
And I think chance is a big part too, which is why sloppily designed games seem to have more of this emergent narrative.
A game like Risk, for example, can have the story of a single soldier holding back 20. But a game like Terra Mystica is unlikely to build to any kind of story. Though some tightly designed games allow for this, like Root or Great Western Trail, but not in the same way.
heh that's a really interesting point! "In Praise of Sloppy Design!" ;D
It is quite odd that I've been so fixated on story games since I was a kid since I think such a tiny percentage of them are truly successful at both... out of the adventure game classics, probably only 'Grim Fandango' has a story strong enough to be straightforwardly adapted into a successful film... but the puzzles are much more rudimentary and frustrating than they were in, say, 'Day of the Tentacle'.
Some other 90s/ early 00s adventure games manage to gesture towards an involving story through cribbing from myths and legends - 'King's Quest' 5 & 6, 'The Neverhood' and 'The Longest Journey' stir memories and associations from half-membered Greco-Roman myth, the Bible, world creation stories etc. to give the impression of a much more unified story than actually exists within the game.
From the classic period, 'The Last Express' might be the only graphical adventure game that I think is on a par - story wise - with decent film and literature while still maintaining a high quality of gameplay. And even then it's on the level of a lesser Agatha Christie but with more geo-political intrigue.
---
So, that's adventure games. In terms of RPGs, obviously the likes of 'Balder's Gate' are generic in terms of storytelling. Outside of JRPGs, there's 'Planescape' and 'Disco Elysium', separated in time by two decades. Both feature remarkable stretches of writing and nuanced characterisation... but they still cleave to the inherently broken D&D stat mechanics. I'd go to bat for both of them, but their gameplay is inelegant at best.
---
I feel like the uncanny stylisation of horror can paper over a lot of flaws. 'Pathologic' and 'Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs' are both janky and fruity as hell, but somehow that adds not lessens the experience of both. But I also appreciate 'Pathologic' is fairly unplayable in many respects and that 'AAMfP' is not much of a game and is only going to appeal if you have a high tolerance for purple prose (which I largely do!)
...
Sometimes I feel I should just give up the persuit and stick to the elegant brilliance of the likes of 'Stephen's Sausage Roll' and other puzzle games. But I know I'll never give up on the dream of the integrated narrative-gameplay experience of the ideal adventure game or RPG that exists in my head :p
Have you been playing it through on your own? My partner and I managed a couple of sessions, but it look us long enough to set up (and put away) we didn't get very far. We both have full time jobs and my partner has kids - there simply aren't enough hours in the day!
I also can't help but think that it's the kind of gameplay system which the automatism enabled by videogames is hugely beneficial... 'Sunless Sea/ Skies' has a similar mechanic of exploring different islands while managing resources, but has the benefit of not having to work out all the stats yourself //and// is written by some of the best interactive fiction luminaries like Emily Short. I actually think text games are still more successful at combining narrative and gameplay than most other videogames.
In terms of tabletop boards/ boardgames, I've always found thar combat seriously undercuts my enjoyment of D&D but I think they're well integrated in some single-session games like 'Fiasco'... though I suppose one might argue that 'Fiasco' is not much of a game.
I finished a campaign on my own. Didn't worry about setup and teardown because I left it on my table. I actually skipped the last boss battle because I was so tired of combat at that point.
That makes sense! I think I'd trust the kids at this stage for us to do that... less so the cat XD
I read through all the endings. There's really not much difference based on your decisions. You're not missing much