GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

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Nafai
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GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#1 Post by Nafai »

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=17537

I'm not familiar with a lot of these games (I'm sure to get Bioshock eventually) but I agree wholeheartedly with Planescape being on that list. Except for:
The fact that as many routes and important decisions there were in-game, there was only one damn ending. Literally.
I agree that Phoenix Wright has stellar writing, but I also agree that there's really not enough player input - there's no way the story advances to the court unless you've found all the clues, and there is only one solution to a problem more or less, even if you the player sees an equivalent or better option.
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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#2 Post by Jake »

Nafai wrote:
The fact that as many routes and important decisions there were in-game, there was only one damn ending. Literally.
To be honest, I'd never really consider that necessarily a bad thing. I mean - some stories, for example, are about fate, and the setting and setup affords only one ending. I've not played the title in question, of course, but I wouldn't call it universally a bad thing.
Nafai wrote: I agree that Phoenix Wright has stellar writing, but I also agree that there's really not enough player input - there's no way the story advances to the court unless you've found all the clues, and there is only one solution to a problem more or less, even if you the player sees an equivalent or better option.
I think my criticism of Phoenix Wright - although I've only played most of the first game, I've been finding that as I spend more time making games I spend much less time playing them - is that while it has excellent character writing, and pretty good scene writing, the plot writing is pretty unimaginative for the most part. It's constrained a lot by the narrow focus on murder trials in which the first accused is innocent, and it's constrained a lot by the requirement to make each case at least as tricksy as the previous one, so a lot of the time plot-writing is driven by gameplay and setting requirements.

Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing in very general terms. The plot to Portal is highly constrained by gameplay and setting requirements, and honestly, the only thing I can think I would change to make Portal better is only relevant to the bonus commentary mode. But in Portal, the gameplay is the main driver, you're realistically going through the game to experience cunning puzzles rather than to experience the plot, and it's the linear progression through rooms which draws you to each puzzle; in Phoenix Wright the plot is the main driver; it's quite literally only character interaction and dialogue and so on which draw you from scene to scene. You have to understand the plot in order to pick the right evidence and object at the right slip-ups, so when the plot railroads you it feels constraining, because it's far more overt.
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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#3 Post by Counter Arts »

You should read the article about "The Future of Story in Game Design". I should send Dennis Dylack an email in how impressed I am with him.
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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#4 Post by mikey »

On the topic of Phoenix Wright, I played a few cases from two different releases, but to be honest it never struck me as exceptional writing - meaning I wouldn't point it out in any special way. As for its genre, well, even more honestly, it feels like a detective game for children. It's fun and all, but I don't buy it as a serious detective story. Or courtroom drama, whatever the name is. So I think it's okay and nott bad or anything, but recently it seems to get a lot of spotlight for text and I don't really know why. It's just a normal game in this respect, IMO, with a fresh idea, but not a whole lot more.

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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#5 Post by sake-bento »

mikey wrote:On the topic of Phoenix Wright, I played a few cases from two different releases, but to be honest it never struck me as exceptional writing - meaning I wouldn't point it out in any special way. As for its genre, well, even more honestly, it feels like a detective game for children. It's fun and all, but I don't buy it as a serious detective story. Or courtroom drama, whatever the name is. So I think it's okay and nott bad or anything, but recently it seems to get a lot of spotlight for text and I don't really know why. It's just a normal game in this respect, IMO, with a fresh idea, but not a whole lot more.
My only working knowledge of it is that people really really like shouting "objection."

As for only one ending, I'm on the fence about that. I used to read Choose Your Own Adventure books quite a bit, and in one there was a particular "bad end" that was the resolution to at least four different options (from various plot threads that were completely unrelated) but basically wound up with me dying in a rather grim manner (what are they doing to kids these days?). I eventually memorized the page number of that bad end and learned to never choose it. But it was really frustrating to do something so different and go on a completely different path only do die in the same exact way.

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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#6 Post by monele »

Phoenix Wright looks like it has stellar writing only because it's compared to games that have no writing :P. I love PW, but I guess one has to admit it's not *great* writing... it's great video game writing maybe, but that's it.
What it's good at, though, is with character relationships, with making you love its world. By the end of PW3, you really feel like you've gone through so many things with the characters of the games that they're like family (well, I'm a lonely person ^^;...).

I'm pretty sure that, looking at it objectively, one would see that the writing quality stays pretty much the same... and the gameplay quality is probably similar. But you still end up feeling like PW3 is the best game out of them, because it can feed from all the experiences you've had so far.

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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#7 Post by Nafai »

What it's good at, though, is with character relationships, with making you love its world. By the end of PW3, you really feel like you've gone through so many things with the characters of the games that they're like family (well, I'm a lonely person ^^;...).
Quite frankly that's really all I look for in stories - something that can draw me in. I agree that when you compare it to other stories in other mediums on a plot and technical level there is no real comparison, but insofar as causing an attachment to the world and characters, it excels at that within its specific context. Of course that is subjective, but the fact the games seem to have triggered that kind of attachment across a wide spectrum should indicate that on an objective level, they've managed to include elements which could cause that kind of reaction broadly.

As for endings:
Well I won't spoil the ending but while fate is a worthwhile topic to explore, I find it difficult to implement in a game in a manner wherein the player, as an active participant in the world, won't feel cheated. If the game world was constructed well enough for the player to care what happens to it and the people who inhabit it, a player will want his choices, his virtual deeds to have mattered. Maybe there are things he cannot change, should not be able to change - but at the end of the day - at the end of the GAME - one should be given the feeling that it mattered that for a few hours in your life, you entered that world.
And please - Jake and everyone else who hasnt played Torment - please give it a try. You won't be sorry :-)
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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#8 Post by Jake »

Nafai wrote:And please - Jake and everyone else who hasnt played Torment - please give it a try. You won't be sorry :-)
No chance! I've heard how long it is! ;-)
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Re: GDC: Deconstructing the Best Interactive Storytelling

#9 Post by Counter Arts »

Fate is that hard to implement in a game that the player wants to interact in a meaningful way? In terms of just pure VN, I don't think it's too hard to make it still enjoyable. Just make sure the events between A and B are really different though logically consistent enough.

Although I would think that having fate that can break although very hard to is more enjoyable.

Just do inductive storywriting.
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