So this is something that I have talked a little bit about in a past post I think, but I guess today I can go into a bit more detail. What spurred this idea in me was that today I finished Fire Emblem Awakening, which is a fantastic game that has a lot of focus on the characters. I feel like it did a really good job of not only having great gameplay, but also having a good narrative, in a certain way. So I'll start talking about the game first, then go into my thoughts on how it applies to games in general.
So Fire Emblem Awakening, for those who don't know, is a turn-based strategy RPG in which you have an army of characters that move around a field and fight each other. It's kind of like chess, in a certain respect. However in this game (if you choose the option, which is recommended), if your characters are defeated in battle, you lose them forever. This makes you care about the characters more than usual as you try to preserve them, but it's not the only way the characters are featured.
There's also a relationship system in the game. Basically, the more characters stand next to each other in battle, they build a stronger relationship. When their relationships reach new levels (literally), you can view a little discussion between the two characters that reveals more about each of them. There are a lot of characters, too, maybe around 40 or 50 in total, and while not every character can have a relationship with every other, there are a LOT of relationship conversations. Like, so many, it would probably take several dozens-of-hours playthroughs to see them all. Learning more about the characters and finding out unexpected secrets about them as they talked really made me feel more connected to them - there are quite a few characters in the game that I really, really like!
But, in the huge quantity of content lies my 'issue' with it. There are SO many conversations that I will never be able to see all of them, because I simply don't have the time or patience. And this is where the weakness of narrative in games comes in for me - in order to make a player feel like they have real agency, you have to give them a HUGE amount of content. And then after making all that content, most players probably won't even see the vast majority of it, they will just see the content they get on their specific path. Indeed, you even probably have to put a lot of that 'flavour content' and text out of the way, so as to not bore people that don't want to read it at all. So it just seems like you'd be doing a lot of work that most people won't even see.
Some people would probably see that as a good thing, to have tons of variety, but from a storyteller's standpoint (or at least, from this one's), it's not so great. I feel like having so many options in a story really just dilutes it, and makes it so that you have to generalize lots of things to make sure that everything makes sense no matter what path the player took. That's one of the things that has always frustrated me when trying to think of stories for games, I believe that a storyteller having full control over the experience will generally result in a superior story.
And really, this kind of shows in Fire Emblem Awakening. As I said, I loved the characters and interactions between them, but the story itself was kind of...meh. It was even kind of incomprehensible at times. And, it's hard to say if that was because of the huge variety of experiences that players might be able to have, but I definitely think it had an effect. Like, you can only have a certain number of characters that are involved in key moments in the story, because all the rest of the characters can die.
And then there's the issue of cost - generation so much content takes a lot of time, which of course takes a lot of money. The guys who make Fire Emblem were able to do that because Fire Emblem is a hugely successful franchise that's been around for I think around 20+ years. So for someone like me, the feasibility of doing something like that is pretty much...non-existent. People always seem to be lamenting the fact that stories in games are kind of meh, but it's no wonder to me.
And to be clear, I'm not really calling for some sort of change or shift in the industry here, I'm just mainly trying to get my thoughts out, just for the heck of it. I mean we are starting to have more games with strong stories, like The Walking Dead episodes from Telltale, and supposedly The Last of Us has a strong story, but those are definitely pretty linear affairs. Usually gamers tend to complain about those - remember what happened with Final Fantasy XIII? But maybe we're starting to see a shift where games like that are more acceptable. That would be cool I guess.
I dunno, I still love games, and I think it would be fun to keep working on games. I think there's a lot you can do, and having the player actually interact with the world is a big plus in creating an immersive experience. But whenever I'm thinking about a story that I'd like to write, it almost always feels like it would work better as a book or comic or something.
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