Misusing the Medium?

The one thing I’ve heard most with regards to narrative in video games is their need to differentiate storytelling from movies. Even just recently at GDC ’09 Jeffrey Kaplan of World of Warcraft fame said, “We need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game. We need to engage our players in sort of an inspiring experience, and the sooner we accept that we are not Shakespeare, Scorsese, Tolstoy or the Beatles, the better off we are."

As of now most games heavily rely on cutscenes to move the narrative forward, which are interspersed with story irrelevant gameplay. They are essentially action movies, but you play the action parts and there is a lot more of them. Games like Half Life 2 are always cited as an example of a story being told in a way that only video games can convey.

Despite primarily loving games for their unique narrative potential, I don’t necessarily think that is the only route games need to take. This crossed my mind recently while playing Valkyria Chronicles. It is a tactical RPG from the team that made Skies of Arcadia. The game menu is presented as a storybook, each picture in the book is selectable and plays a cutscene. One and on rare occasion two per chapter will start a mission. Essentially each chapter is a series of cutscenes advancing plot and setting up a mission. Then you play the mission and there may be a few scenes wrapping up the chapter. The gameplay is just the epic battles that contribute to the main characters rise as a military hero.

This presentation gives rise to a disconnect. The story and the gameplay are two very separate entities. Even still, it works, the game accomplishes conveying the story quite well and provides some lengthy and interesting missions in between. We call it a video game, but it is more a series of animated shorts with a tactical combat game intermixed.

One of the cool things about games is that they can very easily incorporate some of the other forms of media within them. People complained that MGS4 was more movie than game, but I just saw it as a hybrid that worked remarkably well. My roommate once referred to Lost Odysseys’ dream sequences (a series of short stories you actually had to read throughout the game) as a gross misuse of the medium. Who says there is a proper use of the medium? The stories were very well written and provided insight into the main characters past. Besides, if you really wanted to, they were all skippable.

I enjoy and encourage video games finding their own niche, but there is no right way to create a game. All the games mentioned above take from movies and books, but are something entirely different. Hell, they are unique in their narrative style from most other video games. The term ‘video games’ is very broad and encompasses things like Peggle and Tetris, but also things like Bioshock, or further from the norm games like Indigo Prophecy. We shouldn’t stifle what games can become, but let them explore all these options.