Narrative vs. Gameplay, Video Games

So, this topic was brought on by this article. In the article, the author is basically talking about gameplay/story segregation in video games, how often the story that video games intend to tell are sort of destroyed by their gameplay. In the article, the author uses Tomb Raider as an example, saying that while the story/cutscenes portray Lara as reluctant to kill and having a vulnerable side, the gameplay portrays her as a mass murderer with special operations commando skills. Another example comes up in Bioshock Infinite, at one point in the game, you come across a group of executed rebels. Elizabeth, your partner, gasps in horror at the sight. I laughed. I mean, does the game expect me to feel sympathy or regret? I've probably killed literally HUNDREDS of the same people just to get where I'm standing, how the hell am I supposed to believe that Elizabeth shows anything but utter apathy at this point?

This becomes the biggest problem, IMO, in open world games. The best open world games let you do literally whatever you want, but brace that with real world consequence (Fallout 1 and 2). On the other end of the spectrum, we have games that simply don't have good "safeguarding mechanisms". Safeguarding against what you might ask? Safeguarding against a players inevitable wish to break the game.

You see, when in a game, you have a companion, and you decide to shoot him or her, a couple things might happen. Blood might squirt out of your companion and nothing happens. Blood might squirt out and your companion might say "hey, what gives!" or something to that effect. You could actually kill your partner and have the game restart. Or, the game could just lower your gun when you pull the trigger. This is a safeguarding mechanism, it safeguards against players being @ssholes, basically. In LA Noire, the most recent game I've played, I immediately started a driving destruction spree. I ran over everything, probably killed like 20 people. Other than my partner making smart-alec comments and a little flash on the top right corner of the screen saying "don't kill people", nothing really happened.

The implications are hilarious. In the story, I'm playing a doo-gooder cop who wants to do the right thing. In the game, I'm a homicidal maniac who, despite killing like a hundred people, becomes the fastest promoted detective in LAPD history.

In a perfect world, interactive fiction will compel players to behave in ways roughly analogous to how the interactive fiction’s author intends them to behave. For example, In Fallout 1 and 2, I could literally kill anyone in the game world. I would have to deal with the consequences of it of course, but I could do it. There were no "quest essential characters". If I wanted to, I could literally stop in the middle of the desert and shoot my companion in the head. But Fallout 1 and 2 had such a strong fiction, such a strong story, that I didn't WANT to. In GTA, literally the first thing I try to do is figure out how to ramp my car to decapitate the maximum amount of hookers. In Fallout, I don't have a desire to randomly shoot every stranger I come up to, because the fiction makes me CARE about the people and the place. I don't want to shoot Ian (companion in FO1) because I really LIKE Ian. And Dogmeat. And Cassidy. And all my companions in New Vegas (they're really well written).

Anyway, my question to you all is this:

How big of a problem is it that players can effectively screw up video-game stories? Is it important to you? Why or why or why not? Do you think it is an inherent flaw in interactive storytelling in general?

I think it depends on the game.

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS. So.. yeah.

Let's take the Last of Us, for example: you play as Joel, a man who has become hardened after losing his daughter, and living for 20 years in a post-apocalyptic world, struggling to survive, and doing what ever it took. The gameplay reflects his brutality, where you can mercilessly beat men and zombies alike to death - with bricks, your gun, bare fists, whatever you can. The character is reflected in the game's brutality. He's a brutal man who matches well with a brutal environment.

How about inFamous? If you take the brutal path, you'll get "evil" points. The more evil the character gets, the more his clothes and attitude changes in the game.

In Telltale's The Walking Dead, Lee is thrown into the world of zombies, where he has to face the undead and his fellow survivors. Keep in mind that he does have a dark path, since he has committed murder once before. Obviously, that doesn't mean that he would kill again, but it wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility. Clementine is there as a moral compass, because you are meant to feel bad for her, and you're meant to want to protect her from the horrors of this world. Again, your choice.

Then... then you have games like Beyond: Two Souls. Neither the gameplay, nor the narrative, are consistent. Jodie is meant to be a pacifist, but she is totally okay with murdering soldiers who are just doing their jobs. She's a CIA operative, but can't fight against a potential rapist (note: she can fight perfectly well about an hour later, with no actual change). This is a game where narrative was meant to be the primary element, with gameplay being an afterthought; if this is the case, it's terrible for it to be so inconsistent in its story.

Easily Narrative; more so with narrative driven titles such as MGS.

I'm conflicted, sometimes I don't care at all.

Mass Effect has three layers of disconnect. But do I really care that a Krogan can take several shots from my assault rifle on INSANE mode, be killed by a single pistol shot in cutscenes, or require anti-tank weaponry to defeat in the Codex? No, not really. Halo's depiction of SPARTANS also has this between gameplay, books and cutscenes. But that's fine if the gameplay itself is fine. In fact I wonder what this author would say about, say, Soul Caliber, Street Fighter, TEKKEN, Dead or Alive or similar. Do people complain when they have to fight that liquid Kasumi at the end of Dead or Alive 3, which is supposed to be a hectic showdown, life or dead... and then the fight starts and the two fighters do a best 2 out of 3 and fight on a timer and have an announcer start each round. Do people complain that the narrative is destroyed when Ryu's final showdown with M. Bison occurs with an omnipotent announcer that demands they fight at least 2 rounds?

On the other hand, when a game actually gets it right, it's magnificent.

Take Bioshock. The Vita-Chambers are, colloquially speaking, a "real thing" that exists in the lore and is explained in the narrative of the setting, your deaths during the course of the game are "real things" that occur in the story, it's explained away as you using the Vita-Chambers, which ties into the storyline itself. The entire concept of "a slave obeys!" is also based around the gameplay, you can't go around and explore all of Rapture because, aside from the fact that some parts of them are inaccessible due to damage or flooding, you are a slave that can't choose to go where you want. When you finally confront Ryan and kill him in a completely non-interactive sequence, the game is lampshading the very same game mechanic it so exploits, that of linearity and choice. In Bioshock, something we never question in video games, the linear game design, is not only explained but made into one of the central themes of the entire story. Same for Spec Ops: The Line.

Thoughts?

I heard MGS' story was a convoluted mess. In any case, the OP wasn't asking you choose between narrative in gameplay, it's asking whether you care about ludonarrative dissonance. Basically, when you play Half Life, do you care that you're playing a particle physicist that somehow defeats entire squadrons of black ops special forces soldiers with contemptuous ease? Does it jar you? Bring you out of the experience? Or is the story/gameplay good enough so you don't care?

Not really. MGS has some corny-ness, but it does have some depth to it. At times, admittedly, MGS has a bit of an anime feel to it.

It has some terrific scenes. This scene is very well done for the era (PS1, 1998), from the music to the rather decent dialogue.

Plus, there's... this great trailer:

... yeah, MGS can get pretty dark.

Watch Dogs has some really bad ludonarrative dissonance as well. You play as a vigilante who who will beat (or kill if you choose) a man stealing a purse, but since you're a hacker, you can take $2,000 straight from the bank account of a single mother who only makes 20K a year (the profiler is always open if you want to do a hack). In fact, you can literally steal money from a nearby citizen while chasing a purse snatcher. Purdy silly, but that game is super average anyways.

An example of a game that does it well (or perfect) is The Last of Us, although I suppose there were too many fodder enemies at certain points. There is no way Joel would be taking down that many dudes.

Yeah, it felt like Uncharted sometimes. The game was at its most tense during the stealth sequences, rather than big action scenes.

Oh; sorry, then. I answered this completely wrong. Stuff like that doesn't really jar me; it's really the gameplay that wins me over.

@jedixman: Metal Gear is pretty silly at times though. Clones, vampires, cyborg ninjas, giant WMD robots that make cow noises, super powered senators, warehouses full of orphan brains, dudes covered in bees, using a cardboard box to stay hidden, etc. Hell, in Peacewalker, Big Boss even invented Doritos and Mountain Dew (which is apparently Pat's favorite part about that game). Lol

@jedixman: Yeah, Naughty Dog seems to have a slight problem with that. But the stealth scenes didn't have that issue, you're right.

...

But aside from all that, it's a game with a pretty good story, which can be dark at times... despite its random, anime-esque silliness.

Indeed. It should have trimmed down on the absurdity large battle sequences. You really think they're going to send out a small army to kill one guy, wasting manpower, resources, and time in a post-apocalyptic world? They don't even know anything about Ellie; to them, it's just a guy and a kid. The most stupid segment, in my opinion, is when Ellie is running away on the horse and a small army suddenly pops from nowhere to chase her down. Also, they should have made ammo more scarce, where you rely on fists and random items to help you (yes, I know harder difficulties do this, but they also make the enemies more durable, which always sucks the fan and realism out of games like this). If they did that, they also should have taken away guns from enemies, making more of the battles brutal, close-quarter fights.

The stealth sequences were fun. Oddly, I liked playing as Ellie. Though it was a bit immersion breaking when I made a corpse pile, and just hung out waiting for people to investigate the same corpse over and over again, then killing them with my trusty knife.

@jedixman: Yeah, I don't even know why that many dudes would be gathered together honestly. I have Last of Us platinumed, so I had to beat it on its hardest difficulty, therefore I don't really share your view on scarce ammo and too tough enemies. :3

I also loved playing as Ellie! One of my favorite characters of all time, honestly. I've never used that body pile trick. That...*facepalm* would've made the hardest difficulty a bit easier. -_-

@jedixman: Agreed. I've watched the "nuclear" trailer for Phantom Pain like 80,000 times over. So goooooooood.

Why doesn't anyone use a Phoenix Down on Aerith?

@dragonborn_ct: No, shaddup tho... >_<

@jaken7: Actually I have one better: In every GTA game ever you can go on a mass-murdering destructive rampage, literally killing hundreds of civilians, police officers, SWAT officers, and US military personnel. Why is it whenever you are caught, killed or escape into a safehouse, you immediately get away with it and they just forget what you just did? Or why is it whenever you die you spawn to the nearest hospital?

I find this funny when applied to characters like CJ and Niko Bellic since they are meant to be the heroic and sympathetic, but if the player feels like it, they can shiv the nearest NPC and strangle them with their own entrails without any remorse.

@jaken7:

I intend to platinum it, as I did the Uncharted games (... except 3, because I really didn't care enough to platinum 3). I'll get around to it.

Heh, I did the corpse pile thing by accident as Ellie. So funny watching them come to me in an orderly line.

@jedixman: I loved boasting about my 100% platinum. Even made a point to get all the trophies in the Left Behind DLC so I could keep it at 100%...

...then came the dreaded Naughty Dog multipayer map pack trophies. Suffice to say, I have the game platinumed, but it sits at only a 69% now. -_-

That would've been pretty helpful. Might take a lot of patience though.

So what's the problem?

@dragonborn_ct: GTA would be pretty boring if it were that realistic though.

Wanna see a great trailer? Watch the 2014 E3 Trailer with "Nuclear."

Definitely Uncharted. You're supposed to be playing as this charming, rogueish ruffian adventurer. But during the gameplay you play less as Indiana Jones and more like Rambo. You literally gun down 800 armed soldiers in the course of Uncharted 2. It's freaking ridiculous.

That's probably this person's problem with Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider game. Like Uncharted, if the new Lara Croft game wanted to actually portray Lara as a young archaeologist who's never been in such a situation before, instead of being a shooter action game it'd be a survival game. You have to avoid the patrols of people, avoid their camps or sneak through them to steal maps or food or similar, killing a random guy here or there might be possible, but the deck should be stacked in favor of the armed guys controlling the jungle rather than the college grad who's experience with nature is mountain climbing.

Narrative learning the Lore of the world your playing is a must

Wow. How many people on here don't read a word of the OP or any of the comments before posting?

It depends on the game. That scene in bioshock infinite makes me more think of that person as maybe just a normal innocent person, rather then just another Vox or greedy resident of Columbia. All depends on the game. I think the last of us did both pretty well.

Not really a recent topic, but I think Jim Sterling summed it up pretty well.

@skit: He didn't really answer the question posed by the OP, but I guess it was an interesting video. Yeah, I agree with what he's saying, a lot of people just rag on violence because... violence. I guess. Take this article from Cracked. Reason Number 3. A game isn't inherently mindless because it has violence in it. That's ridiculous. The guy in the video gave the example of Bioshock Infinite. There are many other games where violence is part of the theme, Spec Ops: The Line for example. A lot of interviewers played the game, and while praised it for it's message, said that it was basically worthless because it was too violent. THE WHOLE THEME OF THE ENTIRE GAME HAS TO DO WITH VIOLENCE. That's literally the entire point of the game, the nature of violence, what it can do to a human soul, and the nature of our participation in it, and the ultimate futility and inescapability of it. What the hell did they think the gameplay was going to be? Talking it out in a circle with daisies?! I don't see people railing on Catch 22 or Apocalypse Now for violence when the literal entire point of those 2 works of art have to do with violence. It's just that there's this stigma against video games, that they'll always be "mindless", basically waves of people waiting to get gunned down by a faceless protagonist. And maybe that is true to an extent. But it's still an unfair generalization.

Yes, but Lara Croft was trying to take itself seriously, and failing because it didn't know how to make the transition from a pure adventure game to one with a decent story arc. Uncharted started out in the modern era, and it was home her; Lara Croft is an older franchise that they wanted to make more "mature."

Uncharted is an homage and, at times, parody of adventure movies (Indiana Jones, general westerns... you even ride off into the sunset in the first game) and adventure games (games like... Lara Croft)]; you have the dashing hero who gets the girl, who for some reason doesn't care that her boyfriend is a killer (she even picks up a gun - and rather calmly, too). It's a little more calculated: it knows what it is, and it knows not to take itself too seriously, while being capable of making loveable characters with well-written dialogue. Lara Croft was mostly a puzzle / platforming / shooting / general adventure game. Then they tried to give it a story. Let me be clear: giving a game like that a story is not a bad thing.

Let's look at Nintendo for a moment:

You wouldn't want Mario to have a strong story arc, would you? One delving into Bowser's motivations, brotherly rivalries based on their upbringing, why Peach seems too comfortable being a hostage at times, why you're killing innocent people in the early Mario games (... this is real)? No, you wouldn't want that, and nobody is asking for that. It's a pure platformer with fun gameplay.

In contrast, we have Zelda, which has been more about the world and the characters within it (I want to say right now that I've never been a big Zelda fan... so my analysis her will be brief and might have some inaccuracies). It had gameplay, but it also had a deep world to explore, with characters and prophecies in a world of magic.

Metroid... walked the line. It was an advanture-platformer with a rather deep lore, but its protagonist was more mysterious. Samus is always behind an emotionless mask, always cool and collected when we're at the controls, and capable of facing monstrous beasts - that's what we know about her. Could you give a character like that personality? Well... there's a problem here (apologies if this becomes a bit of a Metroid rant)

1. Because she's mostly a blank slate, as far as dialogue goes, we - as the player - will impose whatever personality see imagine for her, possibly one reflecting the player. Therefore, if they decide to give her a personality, it likely won't match what we have always thought Samus would be.
2. Despite what I just said, however, she does have have the basis for a character, even if she doesn't speak. What do we know about her? That she is a lone woman who works for an intergalactic organization, hunting monsters, and is constantly at odds with a dragon. What kinds of character traits do you imagine, based on that simple description? Whatever thoughts come to mind, they likely involve the words fearless, independent, hardened perhaps. What thoughts don't come to mind? Probably something like: obedient, needing to be saved, being emotionally crippled by her nemesis. In Metroid: Other M, they gave Samus a personality like the latter, not the former, descriptions, contrary to what most players have always envisioned - not only because it is player expectations, which I previously acknowledge, but contrary to everything that had previously been established in the series.

... eh... sorry. If you want to read a longer rant of mine, here's a link. I can elaborate, if you wish.

@jedixman: Right, but like I said, gameplay-wise feels more like a straight gears of war shooter, rather than a parody/love letter to franchises like Indiana Jones and westerns. The plot certainly has those elements, but not the gameplay.

I haven't played Metroid, or really any Nintendo game except Super Mario Bros., but what does Samus' characterization have to do with gameplay story separation.

I forget to mention another element: it's also an homage / parody of action movies in general. So it went for over-the-top action sequences, chase scenes, stereotypical villains, etc. The large shootouts reflect the over-the-top action as seen in blockbuster Hollywood films. At least, in the cut-scenes, it is acknowledge that whatever happened in the gameplay segments did happen - you could just argue that the characters have become so used to this, that it is monotonous (again, parodying action films)

It's similar to the Lara Croft situation: taking a game that's mostly about gameplay and trying to give the protagonist more character, while forgetting certain things.

I like my porn and my video games to have an enjoyable story.

What do you mean by screw up a story ?

you mean like getting the "bad" ending ? Something like ME3 where you where not able to create peace between the Geth and Quarians ?

Aren't you like able to go back to a spot you "messed" up at or just own it and go where the story takes you ?

@darling_luna: No, I mean make it so that Cole Phelps, the goody goody detective from LA Noire becomes a homicidal maniac and suffers no consequences, becoming the fastest rising detective in lapd history.

Depends on the game honestly.

Most video game narratives are pretty naff, with a few notable exceptions, so I'd say gameplay is more important. If I'm not having fun, then what's the point? My favourite games (Fallout, Deus Ex etc) all offer player choice and freedom in large environments and that is what I value most in a game, even at the expense of slick writing. That said, having something to fight for does lend a sense of weight to the gameplay scenarios and I'm not a huge multiplayer guy, so story is still important to me.

Also, tech is not nearly advanced enough at this point to have all your gameplay actions affect your story outcome, so, yes, the idea of interactive storytelling is, at the moment, fundamentally flawed, so you have to suspend your disbelief a whole lot to try and ignore it.

Well the video was made nearly a year ago when the discussion had just started and was purely about violence since the games in question where all shooters. It has branched out though, so the video isn't completely relevant to the topic as of current. The theme still stands though and the level of it will obviously vary game to game. Anyways to answer your question, it's impossible to please everybody. If you put to many limits or consequences for the players just having fun, then people won't enjoy it. Then there's people who will complain about this story and immersion being broke as a result. I personally think people just want something to complain about and that in most cases is bs. In cases like with Tomb Raider it's completely justified, the game is blatantly contradicting itself because of the developers. Same with games like watchdog, especially since doing bad guy stuff is encouraged in the gameplay despite the main character being goodish. When the immersion breaking comes from the player intentionally dicking around because it's fun, then going and blaming the developer for allowing the player to actually enjoy the game and do what they want is bs. Most games allow you to play perfectly by adding things like coasting for cars and make it possible for you to drive without breaking any laws. Yet almost nobody plays that way because it's boring and nowhere near as fun. A player can't complain about immersion breaking when they choose to break it themselves.