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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: Matt_Coles]
#135438
07/05/07 11:01
07/05/07 11:01
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,900 Bielefeld, Germany
Pappenheimer
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Posts: 5,900
Bielefeld, Germany
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Just got an idea, how to give a gamer an immersive introduction to a game without reducing the game to mere linear story.
I think, its easy to give him a linear introduction to an area, restraint to use just the path the author wants him to take. And, after he got a sort of overview of the area, and hints how to handle certain events, he can move around as he is pleased.
One could change the restraints within the area, too.
Imagine Gothic, you have become part of a community, and left their terrain to fulfill a certain mission, when you come back, the leaders of your community changed and they don't let you in anymore. Or, the orks occupied that area, and your community vanished.
If you don't want to have those events predictable and linear, you probably need a sort of LOD, wherein such events happen by comparing power of communities or units of knights, bandits, sekts or monsters and a random value - ONLY, when you are far away in other areals of that world...
*** the ideas in this post: #1 linear introduction into an area - non-linear gameplay #2 changing restraints of a world - LOD of big events which changes the restraints
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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: Pappenheimer]
#135439
07/05/07 12:09
07/05/07 12:09
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,206 Innsbruck, Austria
sPlKe
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Well, maybe we could write a STORY TUTORIAL?
anyway, some amazingly well planted points here, and of course, error is once again bringing more sense to this discussion. i love it!
as a matter of fact, id love to bring some examples for good and bad storstelling up...
here we go:
Good Storytelling: Resident Evil Series. The Resident Evil games all have one thing in common: they know how to tell the story. behind all this gore and violence, is a cleverly written story that gets even deeper if you find and read all those stuff lying around, like reports or diary entries...
Metroid Prime Series/Metroid Fusion. Metroid games have never been about story. But the Prime Series shows perfectly, how to do it. Scannings, a few cutscenes here and there and its all perfect. Fusion has good storytelling, allthough the game becomes linear because of that. the other metroid games dont really tell anything except: samus arrives, kills enemies, leaves...
Bad Storytelling: Castlevania Series. Not only is it hard to make any real story out of the castlevania games (IGAs flawed attempts is nothign one would call a story) but when there is something similar to a story, its basically: dracula rises, hero slays dracula... end... bad...
Second Sight: Dont get me wrong. Second Sight is a brilliant Game. I encourage EVERYONE to paly it. The Story is amazing and the gameplay rocks. graphics and sound are almost perfect, the style fits the mood and everythign falls nicely together. but the way the story is told, sucks. sure, at first, the way the story is told seems brilliant, with all those flashbacks and stuff, but in the end, when the real truth behind the plot unfolds, you cant help but scrathicng your head. you just dont know what just happened and why? basically, the ending is perfect but executed not so well...
im sure there are oh so many other good examples but those really stand out...
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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: sPlKe]
#135440
07/08/07 14:27
07/08/07 14:27
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,900 Bielefeld, Germany
Pappenheimer
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Senior Expert
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Posts: 5,900
Bielefeld, Germany
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A further addition with questions:
After a certain set of early results it is a good idea to change the initial question to get better results. Here my new question:
'How to combine story elements and game mechanics?' For instance, if the hero behave brutal in a village he looses trust in all the villages, and bandits gets interest in a coalition with him, or, the living in the village becomes more brutalized and it is dangerous to move in it.
'How to connect them and how to disconnect them?' (For instance, a linear story is independant/disconnected to the hero's actions - or, should I say it is only one-dimensional connected? - means, only depending on wether the hero succeds of fails(and simply has to retry)?
Personally, I'm not very much interested in stories where a person changes its position within a society, or where the relations of a set of persons are changing only, my main interest are stories where the action of an individual influences the society.
For instance, in Gothic the society is static, only the actions of the hero change his position within the different 'villages', the relations between the 'villages' don't change, not depending from the hero's actions and not independently of his actions.
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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: Pappenheimer]
#135442
07/08/07 22:31
07/08/07 22:31
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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 3,208 Germany
Error014
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Woo! This thread is still alive!  Quote:
'How to combine story elements and game mechanics?'
Great question. In many games nowadays, there is a core gamemechanic that kind of loops between states. Often inbetween (cutscenes), sometimes inside of them (dialog, scripted events, ...) the story is told. A common example might be Final Fantasy: It is basically running around the overworld-going into a certain village - going into a dungeon - fight boss - CUTSCENE AND STORY PROGRESSES - go back to start. That is okay and it is somewhat expected these days. But sometimes, it might be better to change this structure and let the story "dictate" the game (of course, one has to assure that its still fun). The new Treasure Island from Capcom (now renamed to "Zack&Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure" (why? WHY?!)) and in a way also Hotel Dusk used this: You had to figure out yourself how to solve a certain puzzle. It was still an overworld-dialog-overworld-puzzle - kind of thing, but by mixing up the puzzlemechanic, it got one step closer to the experience mentioned above. Bad thing is, many will claim that these games are "gimmicky" or just a "minigamecollection loosely connected through storybits". Of course, you cannot reach the same level of polish through fifty mechanics (each puzzle) compared to a game with one (battlesystem in Final Fantasy), but it is certainly a different experience 
Quote:
'How to connect them and how to disconnect them?' (For instance, a linear story is independant/disconnected to the hero's actions - or, should I say it is only one-dimensional connected? - means, only depending on wether the hero succeds of fails(and simply has to retry)?
Yup, you either don't allow certain actions or you have to make sure that they all tend to have the same result (which is stupid most of the time). That is the main disadvantage. But you gain a lot more control and it is easier to develop characters and have twists in the story. Sure, we all dreamt of the super non-linear game with so advanced AI that you don't have to write a story because it will write itself. But that's not possible right now (at least for us), so in the meantime, we just have to focus on a limited number of storylines. There might be several in a game (nonlinear), but to make them interesting enough, we do have to write them all. And not everyone will play a game a second time through (or even a third, a fourth...) - so its only natural that we want the player to play through everything we created, which again leads to linearity.
I don't say that linearity is the best thing ever, because it certainly isn't. It's just that with our limited ressources, it seems like we have to decide if we want a linear, great story or a not-so-great (or shorter) nonlinear one.
Of course, it mgiht also be cool to make the game quite short (an hour?) and give the player lots of options that will alter the outcome. The player then has to play several times to really understand it (this was already suggested here).
Hm. Maybe one could sum it up like this? "Finish game in reasonable timeframe, great and long story with lots of twists, nonlinearity. You can only pick two." Again, I'm only talking about us small developers here. It's a different story for EA and co, although some of them don't seem to care much 
Quote:
Personally, I'm not very much interested in stories where a person changes its position within a society, or where the relations of a set of persons are changing only, my main interest are stories where the action of an individual influences the society.
Yeah, these stories might be great, but sometimes, the difficulty everyone has to face that only exist inside their heads can make for very interesting material. Do you know "One hour photo"? The main character doesn't really influence the society (of course, there might be a very small change, but nothing noteworthy), but yet, it is an absolutely intriguing drama about a person and his relationship to (certain) others. Lovestories (don't look at me like that!) probably also don't influence societies much, but many people like them (I don't know about you, but its still a valid example, right?). If you think hard enough, I'm sure you can think of a movie or a book that you liked despite it is only about an individual and very personal barriers and problems he has to face.
Are these stories less meaningful then the full-blown "change society"-stories? I don't think so. If the character is strong enough so that the viewer/user feels a connection to them (or maybe even recognizes himself (or parts of himself) in him/her), then the impact these movies have can be very strong.
Quote:
Just got an idea, how to give a gamer an immersive introduction to a game without reducing the game to mere linear story.
It's a good idea and it will probably work. In the end, you suggest some kind of "timed linearity", to make sure that the player will find about certain things. It's a good idea, and similar things have been done already (in many RPGs for example: You enter a town, you get a short introduction and storysequence. You can then move around it and do whatever you want (some kind of nonlinearity, although yes, often the real story is still linear)).
Quote:
Well, maybe we could write a STORY TUTORIAL?
Stories are all so different - you can only collect some ideas and hints, but sometimes, its better to not follow a certain advice, as it just fits your story better. So, maybe this thread is already good the way it is? - Maybe someone (as in: someone other than me) could create a document with certain good quotes out of this.
What if you make a sequel to a nonlinear game? How do you continue when one player had the world end up in a peaceful condition, while player B has destroyed every living thing? Of course, you can have the same end everytime, but then it might feel kind of cheap, as it didn't even matter. Any thoughts on this?
Perhaps this post will get me points for originality at least.
Check out Dungeon Deities! It's amazing and will make you happy, successful and almost certainly more attractive! It might be true!
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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: Error014]
#135443
07/10/07 15:16
07/10/07 15:16
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,206 Innsbruck, Austria
sPlKe
Expert
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 4,206
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Quote:
What if you make a sequel to a nonlinear game? How do you continue when one player had the world end up in a peaceful condition, while player B has destroyed every living thing? Of course, you can have the same end everytime, but then it might feel kind of cheap, as it didn't even matter. Any thoughts on this?
there are many ways to continue a story like this...
one would be that both events happened, thus, some places are destroyed while other places are fine, because the humans rebuild it or fled the destruction.
you can also let a few years pass and start from a new scociety that grew of whatever happened. you must not really quote what happened back then because the gamer knows what he did, and newcomers can imagine what happened by themselves.
another idea would be to start with the final battle, and defeat the good/bad guy and just assume that the events of this battle are what actually happened...
there a rea few other possibilities, but those should get you started^^
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Re: How to tell your story
[Re: Nems]
#135445
07/17/07 16:16
07/17/07 16:16
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,900 Bielefeld, Germany
Pappenheimer
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,900
Bielefeld, Germany
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Quote:
My assumption is that Linearity is the essense of story telling, if one were to divert from this then it can no longer be a story but rater a group of stories. I think linearity is essential in more ways than one as it is the very foundation of order, something which we are all trained to maintain regardless of our respective cultural backgrounds. Without it the world of Chaos or randomness sets in and then we have a non consistant or even arbitary medium of entertainment.
In fact, the world around us _is_ chaos, we just make stories out of it to give it order within our minds! Related to the gamer this means that the chaos of the game simply has to give the gamer the _chance_ to build stories within his imagination while playing in this chaos. This means, from the view of deterministic chaos, that chaos has to be self-reflexiv and self-organizing, means, it has provide relations between its elements.
I try to give suggestions how storytelling can work without linearity.
I think the only linearity we need is that of beginning, middle, end, in the very reduced form that I preached(! ) in other posts of this thread.
The middle consists of one twist! Again, have a look at a Gothic-like game: You can put a story in a quest, you can place it in a character and you can put it in an event! As long as it gets a twist, it becomes a story.
EDIT:
Additional suggestion:
Imagine a story with a lot of twists: beginning - twist - twist -twist - twist - twist - twist - end. I can imagine stories of this form where the order of the twists is arbitrary!
Another addition:
Today two novels came to my mind, and I thought about how to transform them into a game:
Sten Nadolny, The Discovery of Slowness (about Benjamin Franklin), and Selim, Or The Gift of the Speech.
But, I don't know how famous these novels are outside of Germany.
EDIT 2: Third addition: To get a diversity of gameplay within a game, the developer can connect certain minigames to certain characters that player meets.
Last edited by Pappenheimer; 07/17/07 17:37.
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