All Gaming Narrative is Wrong

[Noble713]

That sounds like The Sims: Grand Theft Auto more than any kind of game that would be worth playing.

Or a single-player version of Second Life. As for it being "worth playing", that's entirely subjective, but considering that The Sims and GTA franchises sell REALLY well, clearly there is money to be made making such a game. Personally, I'd love this sort of thing. A game that is basically a virtual copy of the real world, where you can poke around caves in Afghanistan as a security contractor (with a decent combat system for when you run into al Qaeda types), then fly to Tokyo (possibly with opium smuggled out of the 'Ghan) and street race with yakuza members, then wander the Amazon looking for a rare flower for some new gene therapy treatment (I could make it myself in my home lab because I have Medicine Lvl 20, but the VP of Pfizer is paying me more to just find the plant). There is no "story", because the story is the life and events that you create on the fly for your character, your virtual avatar. What I *think* Sarevok and Starglider are saying is that since it is completely impractical to develop this level of content at the point of game creation, it can instead be created on the fly by having sufficiently advanced NPCs that behave like real people, giving a completely dynamic experience for minimum resources.

This is probably what the article meant about taking advantage of gaming as an interactive medium instead of aping the linear delivery of movies.

4X Strategy games pretty much already do this, but there seems to be a market for this level of freedom and independent storytelling/experience from a 1st/3rd person perspective. However, this requires an exponentially higher degree of AI competence to convey any sort of realistic, engrossing experience.

[Stark]

No, it talks about story. A game blowing it's development on four or five different systems (each requiring balance, patching etc) and magically having a dynamic, compelling narrative about the whole goddamn world is a pipedream.

And pipedreams are in Starglider's AI thread.

[Noble713]

No, it talks about story. A game blowing it's development on four or five different systems (each requiring balance, patching etc) and magically having a dynamic, compelling narrative about the whole goddamn world is a pipedream.

Here's an example. The player starts as a PMC in Afghanistan. He asks the local clan elder about rumors or whatever, and the elder complains about meeting his opium quota for the warlords/smugglers in Helmand province. The player steals some opium from another clan and offers to deliver it to the smugglers. Once there, the warlord takes notice of his ability to get the job done and decides to hire him to smuggle some product to Myanmar. His meeting with a Myanmar Army colonel devolves into the latter ranting about the difficulties of being a narco-state and involves the player into a plan to permanently break the international power blocs and judicial systems that render the distribution of narcotics such a dangerous undertaking. This could culminate in a mission to infiltrate Interpol and assassinate a major politician.

That's a pretty compelling narrative...or one no worse than what we get as the main storyline in games today. However, in this case, it pretty much only requires 4 competent NPC AIs with their own objectives, dispositions, and faction alignments.

Tribal Elder
Objective: make money, protect faction. Faction: Afghan clan
Smuggler
Objective: make money, expand power of faction Faction: Drug cartel
Army Colonel
Objective: make money, hurt people, expand power of faction Faction: Myanmar Army
Interpol Director
Objective: enforce law & order Faction: Interpol

That's an entire storyline created because just 4 NPCs are going about their lives and the player happened to get involved with them. Now do that for hundreds of NPCs and you now have countless interesting narrative storylines, based entirely on the relationships and objectives of different NPCs, without having to employ writers to make them all.


Re: developing/balancing "four or five systems", well let's see:

We need a combat system, a leveling system, and a crafting system. Stuff that pretty much every PC RPG includes. Throw in a vehicle system (GTA style) and a free market economy (EVE-Online style), the basic frameworks for which certainly aren't rocket science. And if you don't get the balance perfect....modders will fix it.

Re: generating the "whole goddamn world", you don't have to replicate every square meter. Look at Medieval 2: Total War. If you combine all the tactical battle map "squares" they match up decently with the overall topography of Europe and still provide a good sense of scale at the tactical level. Seed a map like that with a bunch of AI's and factions, press "play"....and let it run for 3 months straight. Examine it to make any tweaks you deem necessary (maybe the AI's didn't build an airport in Berlin, because they do most of their business through maglev trains to continental Europe or something), then burn it to disk (Blu-ray...probably need the space) and tell the player to have fun.

Do all that, and all sorts of interesting, compelling plots for the player to get involved in will manifest themselves.

[Dooey Jo]

Do all that, and all sorts of interesting, compelling plots for the player to get involved in will manifest themselves.

Interesting, compelling plots don't just emerge if you throw in enough ingredients, even though the folks over at TVTropes might believe otherwise. They are actually created top-down, and for that to be done procedurally, you need a storyteller AI. And that's something you could apply to pretty much any type of game, so all this talk about super-awesome world simulations is totally irrelevant.

[Eleas]

I should really be shot for continually harping about one particular game, particularly since we're looking for storytelling and narrative techniques as opposed to specific experiences. But having said that (and knowing it's a fool's game to follow that sort of statement with anything save the word but), I think there are a mix of techniques in Thief 3 that should be employed in concert for open-ended or at least faux-open games - as well as other techniques that should never, ever, be used.

In the first example, which concerns the boundary and limitations, some of the most unobtrusive and "open" stuff I see is paradoxically where the path is logical and where the motivations of the characters (and opponents) aren't fucked. In other words, you have a protagonist that you can understand (Garrett, self-centered idealist hiding behind his cynicism), doing things you'd expect him to want to do (stealing riches, making enemies look foolish, and occasionally cutting throats if he's pissed enough), in the manner that would seem to reap the greatest reward and be the most impossibly audacious.

Implicit but never enforced is the idea of there often being a limited window of opportunity; that makes it less annoying to have some of your choices made for you, because you know you have to do this shit soon or else the servants will wake up / the vaults will be locked down / whatever. So that's "open", in the sense that the limits are reasonable and don't stifle you overly much. Of course, that's pretty fucking subjective, and hard as hell to enforce because you have to keep the player on a path he or she enjoys. But even so, that's something a shitload of games tend to forget. Deus Ex, for instance - we're never given enough to actually give a shit about either JC or Paul, so why would their motivations motivate us? And sure enough, we quickly begin to test the limits, because there's no real reason for us to be there. In System Shock 2, at least, we can expect too great a deviation from the levels to result in painful decompression; that's at least something. Still, of course, same problem there; we don't give a shit about the player character. What's left is the discovery, of weapons and locations and recordings and enemies. Once that's done, we have no game; playing it results in diminishing returns, and fails because the paths don't so much branch as separate briefly.

The second observation regards the storytelling devices, and that's where The Cradle (I can hear your teeth gnashing from here, Stark, and it brings me untold pleasure) really shines. Because in the final sense it doesn't matter if the level succeeded in frightening you or not; I'm talking about the design. The Cradle contains a number of setpieces that hint at a larger story, but do not in themselves attempt to pull you into that larger story (that's what your guide does, but even so, she'll let you miss a lot). You can walk through The Shalebridge Cradle and choose to ignore the history of the place, but it will still be there. That's the genius of it.

Too many games try to drag you through the story as if you were tied behind the Plot Truck, in the vain hope that you'll get as much story on you as possible before your body has disintegrated. Some of Thief does at time, as well; the more convoluted crap, particularly the stuff that can't be avoided, is thrice guilty. The Cradle does not. It places you in an environment which actively seeks to confine you, and you're free to try and carve its secrets from it, things the Cradle doesn't want you to know.

The Cradle doesn't give its secrets away like cheap handouts. That's part of why it fascinates me.

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[Stark]

Why would you use Thief 3 as an example, when it's worse in every way than Thief? The Cradle is massively overrated (not just because I had to put up with Thief 3 being crap until then to see it) but the indirect story methods were used in Thief anyway. It even had - gosh - buildings designed like actual buildings with kitchens and toilets and no unopenable doors, which would be truly a revelation in story immersion in the 21st century. If only it had an 'update map' button that made him pull out a pencil?

None of the Thief story is interactive, but it can appear to be an interactive experience because you generally don't see everything on a single playthrough.

[Eleas]

Why would you use Thief 3 as an example, when it's worse in every way than Thief? The Cradle is massively overrated (not just because I had to put up with Thief 3 being crap until then to see it) but the indirect story methods were used in Thief anyway. It even had - gosh - buildings designed like actual buildings with kitchens and toilets and no unopenable doors, which would be truly a revelation in story immersion in the 21st century. If only it had an 'update map' button that made him pull out a pencil?

While I think it's worse in most ways (in terms of shadows and some graphics, and the technical quality of some of the cutscenes, I'd argue it's better), I found The Cradle to be more or less awesome. That was enough for me; I've just never felt any real need to slavishly base my opinion of a game upon the likes and dislikes of some hypothetical Joe Gamer. I now wonder if should have considered the more dangerously hardcore alternative, which is to do the above but in reverse.



I could have been rakish and devil-may-care like yourself, but that was just not to be. Then again, maybe I should just allow for differences in approach, and it's not as if your opinion on that is in any way relevant to the subject at hand.

Ribbing aside, you do have a point in that Thief did the same thing though. I would argue that it was well handled, but it was not as realized in Thief 1 as in The Shalebridge Cradle or even The Metal Age; the Cradle was just a touch more compelling, because there was simply more to discover and to piece together. Your point about lacking amenities in Thief 3 as opposed to Thief 1, while bordering on a red herring, I will grant is accurate. Overall, within the limitations imposed by the game directors, I'd argue that The Cradle was the best of the levels by far; however, they really should have told whoever thought loading areas in-level was a good idea to fuck off on the get-go, and they should have added the things that actually allowed the buildings to make sense. Then again, Thief 2 had similar problems, without the benefit of graphical eye candy.

Stories woven into the world, yeah. Thief 2 had more of that, but Thief 2 was a weaker game in terms of atmosphere than the others, and at times seemed completely to disregard what Thief 1 had established and hinted at. I'm sticking by that opinion. The makeup of Thief 2 was devised by committee, and the end result is simply not as engaging or convincing; it's not... what's that pretentious word again? Ah yes. Not "organic". Whereas Thief 1 is very much that, and Thief 3 is closer to it, than is The Metal Age.

None of the Thief story is interactive, but it can appear to be an interactive experience because you generally don't see everything on a single playthrough.

Yes. I guess that's my point. That, and the fact that when you play it, you generally don't feel you were constrained by idiot level designers. That is why I picked the Cradle as an example, rather than Thief 3, with its abominable city maps and sometimes downright ludicrous missions. I still like the game as a whole, but I doubt I'd have the stomach to play it through today.

[Stark]

Condemned has a similar storytelling mechanism. Matt Parkman is ostensibly investigating a killer and on the run etc etc, but the game is REALLY about underground sonic dwarf ninjas invading the surface world in a holy crusade.

No, it really is.

You can finish the game and only have the vaguest idea what's actually happening (and the spin Condemned 2 put on it was totally braindead) and you have to dig around (and finish the scav hunts) to get the information about why sonic madness is disrupting the city and who the metal-mouth psycho ninjas are. The final boss makes almost zero sense if you just blast through the game.

[Eleas]

The final boss makes almost zero sense if you just blast through the game.

Interesting. I'll have to pick it up. I've gotta wonder, though - does the protagonist realize what's happening and why they're fighting if that occurs? I mean, are we forced to fight the enemy for some reason, or is the player just left scratching his/her head?

[Stark]

By the end he's clearly mentally disturbed and fighting to solve his case/escape. I'm not sure if it's implied anyone (except the player with the extra info) has any real idea what's going on outside of Mr Exposition. But the game is constant battle against psychotics fueled by the setting.

[Eleas]

By the end he's clearly mentally disturbed and fighting to solve his case/escape. I'm not sure if it's implied anyone (except the player with the extra info) has any real idea what's going on outside of Mr Exposition. But the game is constant battle against psychotics fueled by the setting.

Ah, well that works. What you said made me wonder if such an approach wouldn't backfire in another setting (I can easily see any whodunnit backfire if at the end you were forced to fight the ultimate mastermind only knowing that "hey, that's my friend, and... yeah... looks like he's actually evil"). Then again, I dislike overly generic solutions, which is why you won't catch me promoting a specific mix of storytelling devices as some sort of panacea. I've had tons of fun with essentially linear affairs like Wing Commander IV, too; it doesn't always come down to how it's technically done.

[Stark]

Luckily the game is $5.

[Eleas]

And now I don't want it.

[Vendetta]

"hey, that's my friend, and... yeah... looks like he's actually evil"

Matt Parkman has no friends in Condemned. That's why he's a bum in Condemned 2.

He has an uncle, who may be ambiguously evil.

[Stark]

His uncle is hilarious. Almost as hilarious as how many times Parkman gets hit on the head by things.

I'm going to play Condemned as soon as I get home. The last level is so much fun!

[Eleas]

"hey, that's my friend, and... yeah... looks like he's actually evil"

Matt Parkman has no friends in Condemned. That's why he's a bum in Condemned 2.

He has an uncle, who may be ambiguously evil.

Haven't played the game; I was describing a possible problem with the technique, not Matt Parkman's yearning for the hobo life.

[Stark]

I've described it in very vague terms because spoiling the effect makes playing the game meaningless in context. On PC it's probably a buck.

EDIT - OK confession time. I like pretty much the whole game EXCEPT THE 40% THAT TAKES PLACE IN GODDAMN METRO STATION. The department store, the school, the house, it's all good, except those goddamn tunnels. I know it's a metaphor but before I cracked the comabt system I got stuck there for ages.

[Vendetta]

His uncle is hilarious. Almost as hilarious as how many times Parkman gets hit on the head by things.

I'm going to play Condemned as soon as I get home. The last level is so much fun!

The level before last was quite good as well, what with exploring the house and fighting off the occasional hobo invasion.

[montypython]

Wing Commander had some of the best integration of story and gameplay along with the Freespace series, StarFlight and Star Control too in my experience, much more so than many modern games even bother to attempt. A linear-form narrative can be done if structured properly, but game companies prefer the easier flashy graphics approach.

[Stark]

Starflight and Star Control had a standard 'lots of content, dig it up as you go along so it seems interactive' thing, similar to Thief or Condemned, but with less mutilated sonic ninja dwarves.

Freespace has absolutely appalling storytelling, and doesn't even SEEM dynamic (even though the mission scripting allowed htem to carry variables between missions, they seldom did and their scripting had holes in it anyway).

[Eleas]

Starflight and Star Control had a standard 'lots of content, dig it up as you go along so it seems interactive' thing, similar to Thief or Condemned, but with less mutilated sonic ninja dwarves.

Freespace has absolutely appalling storytelling, and doesn't even SEEM dynamic (even though the mission scripting allowed htem to carry variables between missions, they seldom did and their scripting had holes in it anyway).

One thing that made it impossible for me to take FS seriously was the fact that it's supposed to be about you being a pilot. But not only did the simulator allow me to find out things that hadn't happened yet, there was absolutely no interaction involved. You never got to know the other pilots, never got a sense of where you were, there was no coherent storytelling. Fail, despite the impressive-at-the-time engine.