Stories in Games

Lord Chaos · **Joined:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:57 am **Posts:** 1337

Here's an interesting article I ran into on the New Scientist Web site. It seems that storytelling in games is now, 20-odd years after "Myst," becoming fashionable.

Code:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25613-buttonmasher-storytelling-beats-action-in-new-games.html

There's the usual breathless New Scientist "We're inventing the whole future!" spin on this, but it's still worth a look, if only for the games mentioned. There's no mention made of older games centered on story.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Fri May 23, 2014 3:57 pm

Hotlink: ButtonMasher: Storytelling beats action in new games

Quote:

"The Holy Grail of storytelling is not telling a story but co-creating a story with the player," Lambe says. "That's not something I had seen before in games."

Obviously, he doesn't know about Uru.

*sigh* Cyan has always just been too far ahead of their time.

Ainia · **Posted:** Fri May 23, 2014 7:16 pm

Tai'lahr wrote:

Hotlink: ButtonMasher: Storytelling beats action in new games

Quote:

"The Holy Grail of storytelling is not telling a story but co-creating a story with the player," Lambe says. "That's not something I had seen before in games."

Obviously, he doesn't know about Uru.

*sigh* Cyan has always just been too far ahead of their time.

Yeah, *double sigh*... I've always considered all the Myst games to be interactive storytelling in disguise.

I'm really hoping Cyan will be setting a new bar for those laggards out there with Obduction.

They really deserve to be recognized as the paradigm-changing innovators they always have been.

AlanD · **Posted:** Fri May 23, 2014 11:26 pm

To be fair, the success of Myst is generally well recognised, and is shown by its inclusion in museum exhibits (Smithsonian, NY MoMA ? ) Uru is less well recognised, but I think its continued existence online and the groundswell movement to preserve and extend it by fan effort will keep it in the public eye.

New Scientist is a semi-serious science journal but is not especially known for IT coverage, let alone gaming.

cpt-jericho · **Joined:** Sun Apr 24, 2011 12:36 am **Posts:** 319

Hm, storytelling in games is a pretty old thing. It was actually pretty popular in the 80s up the mid 90s.

Quote:

"The Holy Grail of storytelling is not telling a story but co-creating a story with the player," Lambe says. "That's not something I had seen before in games."

That's pretty much what games like Maniac Mansion did: Even with the selection of the toons you changed how the story would go. In Wing Commander you changed the story if your mission was either succesful or not. Those are just two games and both were/are very popular.

AlanD wrote:

New Scientist is a semi-serious science journal but is not especially known for IT coverage, let alone gaming.

That article isn't even semi-serious scientific. It lacks any noteworthy sources.

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

Stories never went away, which is why I don't exactly understand the article. As an example, Mass Effect is all about story. But then, Bioware has always been about story - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic anyone? And a recent game - The Last of Us (action_adventure survival horror) is reaping up awards for its characters, writing, subtext and story.

I'm looking at lists here, story driven. L.A Noire, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Bioshock (of course), Max Payne 3 seem to come up a lot, along with, of course, The Last of Us. The Mass Effect series, in particular, tends to be on everyone's lists. The Final Fantasy series also comes up a lot, and the Elder Scrolls series (Oblivion is one of the games). Some of these, like the Elder Scrolls series, seem to be more about you in the game (the open world) but story is certainly there.

Oh wait - forgot about Farenheit - named Indigo Prophesy in North America.

For Adventure Games, older ones, I always bring up Grim Fandango, which is brilliant brilliant brilliant.

If you want a more indirect story - there's Portal.

I think there is a difference between story and gameplay. There's plenty of story around some games that involve combat. There's also a difference between 1st and 3rd person.

I've never thought that Cyan was best at story. What I think they are extraordinary at is creating virtual worlds.

Stories in Games

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