Why Civilization V’s Narrative Is Broken

December 9, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

I know, I know, there’s lots of discussion out there already about the relative brokenness of Civilization V. I’ve logged more than 90 hours now in Civ 5 (if Steam is to be believed) and picked up the expansion packs over Thanksgiving weekend hoping that some of the basic problems with Civ 5 were resolved.

The expansion packs are fun, but the core problems with Civ 5 still remain. They’re problems of narrative.

Here’s the first problem: If you’re doing well, the game gets easier.

The amount of territory you control, riches you possess, and technology you’ve mastered are all indicators of how well you’re playing the game. If you’re leading the pack with a large, prosperous, powerful and technologically-advanced civilization, you’ve demonstrated mastery of the game so far. In any other video game, that’s where you would graduate to the next level and be presented with more difficult challenges, all of them leading up to a final confrontation. But in Civ 5, that doesn’t happen. The only thing that happens when you do well is . . . the game gets easier.

This puts an inordinate amount of pressure on the early stages of the game. Usually I either come out of the Ancient era flushed will the thrill of conquest and then coast on to a lazy victory over the next 4,000 years, or I come out of it marginalized and weak only to get trounced later on down the line by some jerk with tanks.

To describe it in narrative terms, it’s as if the hero in a story faced their most dangerous challenge right at the beginning, beat it, and then farted around for the next 500 pages. Not very compelling, eh? No wonder so many of my Civ 5 games go unfinished . . .

Looks fair . . .

Here’s the other problem: given the same resources, you will never be able to compete with the AI opponents economically. Their bonuses are set so game-breakingly high on even moderate difficulties that they will always out-produce you to a disheartening degree. They’re playing on the same field but with a different set of rules–it’s as if two teams were playing football, except one of them got to put 30 guys on the field to face the other’s 13.

The sad part is that you can still beat them, because the AI in Civ5 is friggin’ dumb. They really don’t know how to handle the one-unit-per-hex combat, and their foreign policy choices are irrational at best. An ideal AI opponent would use their resources more effectively as the difficulty level was increased, but the Civ 5 AI just gets increasingly large amounts of production that appears by magic. It’s more and more jarring with each level of difficulty.

There’s a rule about world-creation, and it goes like this: your world has to follow it’s own rules. If it doesn’t, it’s jarring to the audience. Each infraction is a zipper in the costumer, a peek at the man behind the curtain, an ounce of immersion irrevocably lost. And when you have too many of these breaks, your audience stops buying it.

It’s hard for me to picture myself as a benevolent world leader, guiding his people to glory, when money keeps appearing out of thin air in my competitor’s cities and their populations live in a state of permanent, unnatural euphoria. That’s actually a really creepy image, now that I think about it.

What do you think? Am I playing the game wrong? Comment below, or subscribe over there to the right . . .

Kharak Is Burning (Pt. 3: The Subject Did Not Survive Interrogation)

December 3, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

The subject did not survive interrogation . . .

Homeworld’s storytelling style in one word? Understatement.

The above phrase is taken from the cutscene briefing between missions 3 and 4. After the burning of Kharak, the mothership escaped with the remaining survivors and the “rest of the story” is gleaned from one of their Taiidani prisoners. In return for breaking a 4,000-year-old treaty that they had no knowledge of, the Hiigarans’ adopted homeworld has been immolated by the border fleet of an ancient enemy. Fleet Command finishes his report with a terse, antiseptic phrase: “The subject did not survive interrogation.”

Why not? Were the interrogation methods too harsh? Did the captain of the captured vessel have some sort of suicide pill secreted on his body? Or did the Exiles’ new-found thirst for revenge find a convenient outlet in this lone ship captain, a scapegoat for the near-genocide of their entire species? There’s no way to know.

We can imagine the dark room, the blinding lights, the desperate rage of the interrogators who have, only hours ago, seen the near extinction of their people. We can imagine the chaos of battle aboard a ship designed for peace, and the thirst for revenge in the heart of the powerless. We can see the blind eye that authority turns to a hidden knife, or an “accidental” overdose . . .

And we may even be okay with it.

The point is, you can never tell the whole story. The story is never contained within pages of writing or video files. The story isn’t in the medium; the medium is just shorthand. Where the story actually happens is when someone picks up the book (or game) and gets into it; the story exists in the space between the medium and the audience.

Lots of games make the mistake of trying to tell all of a story. The fact is, no matter what medium you use, you’ll never be able to match the speed, precision, and specialization of your audience’s imagination. Trying to tell everythings stifles this process, and makes the world feel small (a real problem for video games). The best stories, though, are stimulants for the audience’s imagination, a push in the right direction that sends them into a world of their own creation.

And that’s why the minimalist approach in Homeworld is so powerful. It gives the story room to breathe. It leaves plenty of room for the audience to fill in the blanks, and in doing so it becomes their story as well.

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Did you miss part 2? It’s right here . . .

Kharak Is Burning (Pt. 2: Characterization Through Naval Architecture)

November 25, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

Here’s an interesting question: where are Homeworld’s characters?

The characters of Homeworld are limited in number and not particularly talkative. Some similar games manage to pull off a great deal of characterization with body language and visual cues instead of long dialogue trees; Homeworld is not one of them. In fact, the story barely contains any people at all. There are no faces anywhere in the game, and the human form is represented only twice in the silhouette of Karan S’jet in the beginning and ending cutscreens.

How can the burning of Kharak (or any of the plot developments) have emotional weight if Homeworld has no people?

The answer is in the art assets that received the most time and attention from Relic’s staff: the ships. The ships are the characters. It’s obvious from the point that Karan S’jet, neuroscientist, is implanted into the heart of the Mothership to serve as its living core. She is the Mothership, literally. The Bentusi are one with their vessels too (and the Bentusi Exchange even looks like a face, if you squint a little). The Taiidan Emperor’s flagship serves as his body; when it is destroyed, he is destroyed. The Kadeshi, with their strange needle motherships; Captain Elson, with his slick all-black elite guard destroyer; the junkyard dog, with its brutal industrial jaws; the silent monolith of the mind-control ship . . . they’re all characters, even if their bodies are made of space-age ceramic alloys and powered by fusion reactors.

And like any good character, you can tell exactly who they are as soon as they step onto the screen.

One glance and it’s pretty obvious what Han Solo is all about.

Let’s take a closer look at how some of these characters are established.

Karan S’jet (The Mothership)

The Mothership is about nuturing, in design and in function. Huge docking bays store hundreds of smaller vessels, carrying them from point to point via hyperspace jumps. Other ships are “birthed” out of her side–hey, it’s not called a Mothership for nothing, is it?

The Mothership is all curves and gentle angles. It isn’t a confrontational vessel. While it is the most important ship in the game and can take quite a beating, it is practically unarmed.

None of these design decisions are without purpose. Karan S’jet is no warrior; she is a strategist, yes, but she isn’t about to be on the front lines. The glory of combat belongs to others (Kiith Maanan or Soban, perhaps). What she is, though, is the caretaker of her people. She is the spiritual mother of the exiles–what better way to make this obvious than to unite her with the Mothership?

The Mothership also follows an age-old rule of fictional starship design: the longer a vessel is relative to its width, the faster it is. One glance at the Mothership’s considerable girth is enough to tell you that it won’t be going anywhere quickly (even with those massive fusion drives).

The Emperor (The Taiidan)

Jutting. Angular. Aggressive. Alien. Spikey. All of these words describe the Emperor’s flagship. Thematically, he’s defined by being everything that Karan isn’t (this binary runs deep).

If heroism is making sacrifices for the good of others, villainy is the thirst for personal power–and the Emperor is thirsty. While Karan gave up her body to serve her people, the Emperor gave up his out of continuing self-obsession. His flagship is designed to intimidate; it is a vehicle for ego.

It’s only fitting that during the final confrontation, the Emperor’s flagship spews an endless stream of scout fighters that suicide into your vessels–a perversion of the protective, nuturing role that Karan has played through the entire game towards her own ships/people.

Maybe I’m reading too far into this, but the Exiles’ Mothership is also entirely vertical while the Imperial Flagship is completely horizontal–another indicator of how they define each other through opposition.

The Kadeshii

If Karan S’jet is a hero and the Emperor is a villain, the Kadeshi are . . . a little more complicated. (Spoiler alert)

The Kadeshi were originally part of the Hiigaran exile, but instead of making it to Kharak they hid inside of the Great Nebula. They remain afraid of discovery and retribution; the need to survive at all costs has become their religion. They are the lizard brain.

None of this is immediately obvious from your first contact with the Kadeshi needle mothership. Characterization in this case is carried out through action, not through form . . . because what you can’t see here are the clouds of deadly swarmers that stream from the launch bays once your refuse their offer to stay in the nebula.

The Kadeshi are unreasoning and extremely deadly. They are afraid, and that’s what makes them dangerous. You can see it in the way that their ships swarm together in intricate patterns before tearing your fleet to shreds. They attack recklessly, like cornered animals, and the way that their ships are designed leaves them no other choice (massive firepower, but little armor). Fanatic devotion to a cause, unity achieved through fear of judgement day postponed; it’s all there, written in design decisions and battle doctrine.

It’s ironic, then, when their destruction comes from attacking their own kin, and not from the all-powerful Imperial enemy that they feared for so many generations.

The needle mothership is not to be underestimated, either. There’s an important visual cue for the player in the massive, blunt bow of the vessel . . . it will not hesitate to plunge through your formation like a battering ram, smashing smaller ships to bits, if you give it the slightest opportunity (this happens to me every damn time, despite my best efforts).

The Bentusi

Enigmatic traders of the galaxy, the Bentusi were one of the first species to travel the stars. They have long since ceased to use physical bodies are instead fully integrated into their trade ships (sensing a theme here, anyone?).

Their ships sparkle with rich, mysterious light, hinting at an incredible density of knowledge and power. It is hidden, though, wrapped up in a tough outer shell that obscures most of the view. Only when the Bentusi choose to trade is the inner power of their ship revealed; can the metaphor be any more obvious?

They also violate the “long ships go faster” rule to great effect, as the fairly stout Bentusi trade ships are faster than anything else of comparable size. This violation sets them apart from the other space-faring races, since they can defy the conventions of the game itself.

The moral?

Characters don’t have to be people to be effective characters.

Next week, Part 3: Minimalism to the Max . . .

Or go back to Part 1: Using Grief In Video Games

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Kharak Is Burning (Pt. 1: Using Grief In Videogames)

November 18, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

I played through Homeworld last week.

Again.

This is something I’ve been doing pretty much every year since Relic’s flagship game wowed audiences at the 1999 E3 awards. I can usually feel the beginnings of the urge by the end of summer; by October the mothership is launched into low Kharak orbit and exiles are once again on their way to reclaim Hiigara, their ancient homeworld.

Clearly there’s something here that keeps drawing me back to the game, over and over and over again. But what is it?

With the upcoming HD re-releases of the original games and the promising-looking Homeworld: Shipbreakers under development, I think that it’s time to see if I can put my finger on what exactly that magic is.

I’m breaking it into three parts:

The Use of Grief
Storytelling via Naval Architecture
Understatement

(Um, spoiler warning? I guess? For a game that’s nearly 15 years old?)

The Setup

It’s a rare thing to come across these days, but the original Homeworld came with a nice thick hardcopy manual. It covered all of the basic stuff (ship types, basic commands) but what I loved best was the ~70 page historical and technical brief (downloadable here). It was chock-full of the history of Kharak and its people, detailed cultural breakdowns of the different clans (“Kiithid”) that made up Kharakid culture, discussion of the different technologies that were employed in traveling through deep space, and more.

Little did I know that this was all setup for one of the more memorable bait-and-switches of my young adulthood . . . but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Homeworld’s story revolves around the inhabitants of Kharak. The historical brief details 3,000 years of survival on a harsh desert world; it chronicles countless lives spent in endless combat with each other and with the encroaching sands.

Everything changed when a survey satellite discovered an ancient starship buried beneath the sands of Kharak’s endless desert. This wreck housed an artifact called the Guidestone, a single piece of black lunar rock with a crude stellar map and a set of coordinates deep in the galactic core. The coordinates were labeled with a single word: “Hiigara,” or “our home.”

The Guidestone

The Guidestone united the Kiithid in pursuit of a common goal: returning to their rightful home. A massive colony ship was designed and built to reclaim the Kharaki ven with the combined effort of everyone on Kharak, it took over 60 years to construct. It is the mothership, and it’s your home throughout the campaign.

The Mothership in orbit around Kharak

Sure, you could skip all of this if you wanted. You didn’t have to read the Historical and Technical Briefing if you didn’t want to. There’s enough covered in the Homeworld Intro to get you started.

But I did read it. I gobbled it up, before even setting CD to disk tray, and I loved every word of it.

Can you imagine that now? A game that expects the player to read more than 70 pages of information before even starting to play? Corporate leadership would laugh such a game developer out of their offices . . . and yet this is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Anyway, upon completion of the mothership, you’re instructed to take it on a shakedown cruise to test the hyperspace core. Somewhat predictably . . .

Everything Goes Horribly Wrong

The Mothership survives the jump, but their support ship has been destroyed by pirates. Fortunately the pirates have bitten off more than they can chew with the mothership and are sent running (for the time being).

The narrator tells you to head home and complete the mothership’s construction. The briefing outlines what should be another slight increase in the game’s tension, and you’re ready for something slightly more difficult than before . . .

Then this happens:

Everything Goes Even More Horribly Wrong

(Homeworld, Mission 3)

Kharak is burning.

The planet is gone, consumed in a nuclear firestorm.

Why? And how? Who could have–

But there’s no time to explain. There are hostile alien ships in orbit, and they’re targeting the remaining survivors. As you deal with the chaos of fighting a technologically-superior, alien foe, the story is fed to you bit by bit.

This is the answer to the question:

How Do You Make The Player Grieve?

Games typically appeal to a narrow subset of emotions, and grief is not usually among them. When they succeed at inspiring grief, though, it can be devastating (think of Aeris’s death in Final Fantasy VII, for example). The burning of Kharak is one of the few moments that I’ve heard multiple gamers describe as “heartbreaking.” Why? Why is it so powerful?

It certainly isn’t in the portrayal of this near-genocide–all we see is an expanding black splotch on the surface of a tan disc followed by a pair of chilling still images in the following cutscreen. There are no faces contorted in terror, there is no Aeris getting stabbed by Sephiroth . . . there is no representation of the human form at all, actually.

So why do we grieve? And what are we grieving for?

The real destruction is invisible; it happens inside the player, where carefully-constructed systems of history and politics are erased with a single phrase: “Kharak is burning.” They don’t come crashing down, they don’t slowly erode; they simply cease to exist. Everything that we were getting comfortable with, everything that we were internalizing in preparation for the story to get rolling–suddenly it’s gone. Things are taken from us that were just starting to become “ours.”

And that’s the point of grief.

Kharak burning

As players, we aren’t really TOO upset about losing someone that we’ve just met. Honestly, do you remember getting teary-eyed at the burned corpses of Uncle Own and Aunt Beru in “A New Hope?” Neither do I. But Relic was craftier than that; they created a deep, interesting, compelling world with just enough backstory to really whet our narrative appetite. And just as we thought we knew what to expect–just when we thought this was all going to go down in typical vanilla sci-fi fashion–BAM! They took everything we were comfortable with away from us. It’s designed to emotionally tie us to the story.

And it works.

It’s not just the surviving exiles who have sworn revenge against the Taiidan Empire. We, as players, have had something that we cared about taken from us. And now we want blood.

Part 2 to come: Characterization via Naval Architecture. Don’t forget to subscribe! (Up and to the right . . .)

A Sci-Fi Sit-Com: Modular Micro-Storytelling In FTL

November 11, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

FTL is a popular top-down episodic sci-fi spaceship management simulator with roguelike roots. How’s that for a fistful of genres?

If you’ve never played it, imagine The Sims but set in space with more house fires. Or better yet, go buy it on Steam.

The game is short, sure, but it keeps drawing me back in over and over again. Why? What is it about the randomized storyline and simple 2d graphics that keeps re-engaging me?

—

The Nesasio, preparing for launch.

I selected the type-A stealth cruiser for this playthrough (The Nesasio). The stealth ships have produced the most engaging gameplay in my playthroughs; they’re extremely high-risk, high-reward designs that usually coax ridiculous shenanigans from my otherwise cautiously-build-lots-of-shields-and-peck-them-to-death-from-extreme-range playstyle. The Nesasio doesn’t even start with shields! It’s a design that relies on striking first and hardest to survive, so it will be a good opportunity to reach outside of my comfort zone.

I don’t understand why people seem to prefer the type-B. Sure, the Glaive beam is nice on paper . . . until you realize that it takes forever to charge, and if you can’t land the first few blows with the stealth cruiser you’re pretty much dead (remember what I said about the lack of shields?). For this playthrough I took a few extra points of evasion and some sensible, fast-charging weapons instead.

With that in mind, The Nesasio set out on its journey. What dangers will Kusy, Weston, and Kletzkin face? What perils will they brave? What fascinating new technologies will they discover? And can they outrun the Rebel fleet, hot on their heels?

—

FTL operates on a completely modular storytelling model. This modularity is knotted together with the roots of its core gameplay mechanic–the game is divided into tiny “episodes” with each jump that your ship makes. Each episode is chosen at random from a set of potential episodes, depending on the type of sector that you’re in. The number of episodes that you’ll experience isn’t fixed, and apart from two special cases (quest markers and unlocking new ships) they’re completely interchangeable. The only thing that carries over from episode to episode is the condition of your vessel.

Because it’s so easy to divide the “micro” storytelling from the “macro” storytelling in FTL, its an excellent testing ground for questions like:

Does storytelling “in the micro” matter at all (if you can just insert and remove pieces of it at random)?
How much control over the story does the player have? And does this control strengthen the story?
Can the modular storytelling method actually strengthen a game?
What’s the real narrative at work in FTL?

—

I played aggressively through the first sector, knowing that without some quick gains in equipment and scrap The Nesasio would quickly be out-gunned by its Rebel opponents. This strategy nearly backfired when my second opponent was a well-armed Rebel fighter; its drones and heavy laser weaponry played havoc with The Nesasio’s unshielded hull. Fortunately my pilot, Kusy, managed to evade some of the most destructive blasts, and The Nesasio’s titanium system casing kept the weapons online long enough to chew through the Rebel’s own inadequate shielding.

Limping through a nebula, I scored some lucky early hits on Rebel drones and poorly-armed pirates; my daring crew freed another human, Luaan Ti, from a slaver, and finally we found refuge with Mantis traders hiding their black market hub inside of a dead space whale. While repairs were underway, a slug named Chriz offered his services to us. I accepted, hoping that the slimy creature’s nefarious capacity for cunning and latent telepathic abilities would help us profit via some non-violent methods (The Nesasio’s hull was still naked as bare durasteel).

—

If the modular storytelling used throughout the first seven sectors of FTL removes the possibility of recurring characters, slowly-developing plot arcs, and most other common storytelling techniques, what’s left? How can the episodes still be effective?

The answer can be summed up in one word: atmosphere. There are thematic elements and common characteristics that recur, over and over again, within each episode. The event descriptions are short–often no more than a few sentences–and you’re always reminded that the Rebel fleet is close on your tail. The events are interchangeable, but the conflict is not; you’re confronted over and over again with the choice between delaying your journey (for the chance to make your ship more powerful) and widening the gap between you and your pursuers (at whose hands you will die a violent spacey death).

The episodes are not in-depth explorations of the FTL universe; rather, they rely on flags that invoke other common tropes of the science fiction genre. Every fantasy book since Tolkein has had humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.; every sci-fi story since Star Trek has had a warrior race, space pirates, a telepathic species, ships hiding in swirling nebulas, battles through asteroid fields, etc. When the game tells us that a captain is hailing us on the viewscreen, we know exactly what it’s talking about even though there isn’t a single bit of description. Send a shuttle down to the surface of this planet (even though there’s no shuttle bay modeled on any of the ships)? Of course! That’s just what people do.

In the same way that a sitcom assumes we’re familiar with the tropes of day-to-day life, FTL assumes we’re familiar with the tropes of science fiction. Each episode, despite its bare-minimum level of description, is tapped into the huge library of science fiction media that you already have in your head.

—

My journey continued through rock and pirate-controlled sectors, a combination of lucky hits, desperate evasive maneuvers, and last-ditch hand-to-hand brawls between my crew members and alien attackers. The perils of space seemed far more dangerous than the Rebels behind us; except for a few scouts, The Nesasio’s screens had been clear of the Rebel threat. By the end of the fourth sector, I could tell that my ship’s weapons and shielding systems were woefully under-powered despite my aggressive attempts to net additional scrap and more components.

Instead of trying to pass through yet another rock sector, I decided to gamble and press through the Slugs’ home nebula. Slugs are notorious for their love of fire and anti-crew tactics; I hoped that they’d be a little kinder to The Nesasio’s battered hull than the Rock pirates had been . . .

Two frantic battles later, I realized that I had been right. The slugs WERE easier on the hull, but only because they repeatedly disabled my life support systems with computer viruses! I defeated the last ship with a last-minute laser blast, and my crew members gasped for life as oxygen returned to the corridors of The Nesasio. Another few seconds and they would’ve been done for

The next battle was easier, though, and I convinced the slugs to give me the coordinates of a secret construction platform. Chriz, my ever-mercenary slug crew member, helped us navigate the nebula, and after defeating a small Slug interceptor we scored an experimental Slug Cruiser! I look forward to trying it out on the next playthrough.

Were The Nesasio’s fortunes were looking up?

—

Besides the occasional quest mission and the side stories to unlock additional vessels, there’s one important thread that ties all of the episodes together.

This thread is your ship.

I’m working on a longer discussion about this (for an upcoming Homeworld post), but your ship is something between a character, a player avatar, and a record of everything that’s happened so far. In my game, I had several crew members (whose species were not traditionally very skilled at hand-to-hand combat) become quite adept at cross-corridor firefights and engine room brawls. We were boarded so many times that I had no other choice; but luckily, they survived. I also never found weapons powerful enough to reliably break through energy shields; instead, The Nesasio came to rely on a teleporting bomb to bypass them and disable the shields from inside.

Effective episodic storytelling leaves marks on the characters that persist, even if the episodes themselves are randomized.

—

Outta gas . . .

Speculation as to The Nesasio’s improved fortunes was quickly corrected as Rebel forces pounced on us the moment we exited the nebula. Fortunately we were able to slip away with only a single direct hit . . . but it consumed the last of our fuel as the ship arrived in the heart of a deeper, uncharted nebula.

We handily defeated the single Rebel scout that had been able to follow us in our desperate flight, but without fuel for the jump drive The Nesasio was going nowhere. I debated the risks of turning on the vessel’s distress beacon, but in the end decided to try it. The roll of the dice paid off; an automated ship materialized out of the mist with fuel for sale. It was expensive, but better than being stranded.

After a few more battles, The Nesasio arrived in the last remaining stronghold of Federation territory intact, only moments ahead of the Rebel fleet. I’d cobbled together a strange collection of weaponry–two drones, a teleporting breach bomb–but with any luck, I hoped to scrape out a victory against the Rebel flagship.

—

The macro-story of FTL is the same every time. Flee from the rebels–overcome some challenges–defeat the flagship (or die trying).

You have very little choice in which episodes occur. Sure, advanced sensors will tell you whether or not there’s a ship in the adjacent system, but they’re imperfect and there’s no guarantee as to whether the ship is friend or foe. It’s a game of randomized challenges that you have no control over.

But you do have control over how to handle those challenges. The palate of tools at the your disposal is nearly as varied as the selection of violent spacey deaths arrayed against you. It’s a trademark of good micro-storytelling that each episode, while interchangeable, is distinctly different and presents unusual challenges.

By lowering the cost of defeat by shortening the game, encouraging multiple replays with a wide variety of unlockable ships, and building a great deal of variety into the randomized threats FTL is sure to produce situations where you manage to escape by the skin of your teeth (or go out in a blaze of glory).

These are the situations that result in great stories. These are the situations that you tell your friends about later over drinks (or via blog). And these are the situations that construe the real narrative of FTL, because the story of FTL is actually the story of how you play FTL.

This is where modular micro-storytelling shines.

—

Sadly, this journey ended in defeat. The Nesasio’s piecemeal weaponry just wasn’t enough to crack the rebel flagship’s impressive shields. The teleporting breach bomb was effective until it ran out of ammunition, and with only two additional weapon slots the type-A stealth cruiser just didn’t have enough firepower to break through (even with an anti-ship drone). Perhaps if I’d invested in crew teleporters and tried a boarding party . . . but hindsight is 20/20. I did have the rare opportunity to purchase a lock-down bomb early in the game, but not enough money to do so.

The Nesasio was durable enough to survive the flagship’s incredible firepower, but while scrambling desperately to find more ammunition for the breach bomb the Rebel flagship got within range of the Federation base and all was lost. It’s the first time I’ve lost a game this way, but that’s okay–I’m looking forward to using the Slug Cruiser on my next playthrough . . .

—

Contrast this with The Walking Dead.

Both games keep the large, macro-story out of the your reach, but both games give you control over the details of how the story is implemented. Both are even divided into episodes . . . sure, there are some pretty big differences in narrative (The Walking Dead is creating a new universe, while FTL is merely playing with one we already know) and in mechanics (there are no quick time events in FTL, and it’s designed for multiple playthroughs) but the key is that the storytelling in both games is made effective via player choice. Both games use choices to create emotional investment, and that points to an important characteristic of video games:

Choice is vital.

Player choice is the characteristic that make video games a unique storytelling media. When it’s done well, very little else matters, and when it’s done poorly, again–very little else matters (I’m looking at you, Skyrim, and the exactly 4 hours I played before I got bored).

When you’re given control over the “how” of the game, then it becomes a vehicle for self-definition. There’s the narrative of the game, sure, but then there’s the narrative of who we are while playing the game. Video games can use our input to answer the question, “Who am I?” The quest for self-identity is what gives them power, and what makes them so tricky to design well.

FTL asks us how we handle pressure and situations where we never have quite what we need. The modular episodes are an ever-shifting challenge, something that we can never merely memorize our way through. It tests our ability to improvise, adapt, and evaluate risk.

It’s not the only way to tell a story, sure. But it’s a pretty good one.

Also, Legos.

“Don’t … Eat … Dinner”

October 1, 2013 by davidsmcwilliams

Why “Player Choice” Is Stupid

I really like The Walking Dead, but the way “Player Choice” is emphasized in most modern games is pretty stupid.

I’m supposed to like having choices in the plot. They’re all the rage these days. “More freedom!” “Shape your character’s destiny!” “Multiple playthroughs with different endings!”

But . . . dammit, I just can’t. There’s a reason why people spend their lives studying Shakespeare instead of stuff like this:

I read this cover-to-cover as a kid. It was actually pretty great.

And that’s because letting the players construct the story is a stupid idea.

Reason #1: It Dilutes Quality.

Every time the studio gives the player a choice about plot, it splits the storyline. Each extra decision point depends on the results of the previous ones, too, and so potential storylines can multiply very quickly. A game’s story can quickly get bogged down in tens (or hundreds!) of alternate paths, depending on how much control the studio gives the player.

Producing each of these paths requires more writing, voice acting, animating, level design, widget inclusion, spline reticulation, whatever. Sure, some assets can be reused, but that requires design compromises. And unless everyone who plays a game loves it so much that they go through and play it again (and again, and again), the studio is spending time and money creating scenes that most people will never see. The result is a handful of mediocre products instead of one good one.

Tell one story, and tell it well.

Reason #2: It Destroys The Narrative

One of the original drafts of Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi had Luke defeat Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine only to put on Vader’s mask, turn against the Rebels, and take the universe for himself.

To quote my brother: “lol wut?”

Lol wut?

This alternate ending is ludicrous . . . and yet this is what many video games that embrace “player choice” are trying to do. They want to give Luke Skywalker the chance to put on Darth Vader’s helmet.

And that story sucks, because it makes no sense. Luke Skywalker the Sith Lord is about as believable as Ron the Death Eater. I can go read fan fiction if I want junk like that, I don’t need to pay $60 for it on Steam.

Also, when a game is determined to give the player control over those pivotal, character-defining moments, it robs them of their power. The story has to be written in a way that it still works no matter which choice the player makes–making that choice irrelevant to the narrative. Instead of a multitude of stories, there’s no story at all.

Reason #3: It’s Impossible To Conclude

This is also known as the “Mass Effect 3 Finale Fiasco” principle. It’s what happens when you have a tangled web of possible outcomes but only enough budget to pull off one spectacular final confrontation. Game developers are left with two options . . . which both suck. Either they can make most of the endings lame, or they can slice through the knotted plot-lines with an ending that makes most of the players’ choices irrelevant. Which begs the question: why include these choices at all?

But . . . But . . . The Walking Dead is a good game! How the hell did that happen?

Tell Just One Story, Remember?

“You’ve got that ride to Macon, if you want it.” –Kenny

This game that’s supposedly all about player choice? It’s not, really. No matter what you do, you will strike the walker in the middle of the road while on the way to prison, find Clem, head to the Herschel family farm, etc. It’s a linear story that we, as the player, can do very little to change–we can’t go save the world, for instance, or decide to side with the Save-Lots bandits and raid the dairy farm.

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Interrupting bathroom zombie.” “Interrupting bathroom zom–” “BLARGREAH!!!”

Even when there are choices that split the narrative, brutish and inevitable zombie death quickly swoops in to save the day. The Walking Dead franchise is an ideal setting for this type of game because it’s easy to clean up loose ends when your series is known for indiscriminate character-killing (just ask George R. R. Martin).

But while we don’t have much control over the facts of the story, we do have control over the mostly-inconsequential details. We don’t control the “what” of the story, but we do control the “how,” and that’s the thing that sucks us in. The little decisions create emotional investment; they make the story live and breathe for us. More on this in a second.

There Are No Good Options

“Dammit, Lee, just cut off his fucking leg!” –Kenny

When games say that they allow a player to choose the actions of their character, what they usually mean is that your avatar can either be a saint or a dick. Mass Effect even went so far as to color-code the dialogue options, just in case there was any confusion . . .

*obligatory "you should have been femshep" joke*

. . . although this one seems pretty clear.

But that’s not how realistic characters behave, and that’s not how good stories play out. This is where Telltale got it right, because in The Walking Dead . . . There are no good choices.

Do you cut off the band director’s leg? Or leave him for the walkers?

Do you loot the station wagon and leave a stranger to starve? Or let Clementine keep going hungry?

Do you let the nameless survivor be devoured by walkers? Or shoot her and risk the safety of your group?

There are no right answers; all you can do is choose between one set of terrible consequences and another set of equally terrible consequences. And that’s great! Because as soon as we realize that our victory or defeat doesn’t hinge on correctly deciphering the dialogue tree, we can sit back and enjoy the story. There’s no need to try and game the system–we can make mistakes or do things we later regret, but the story keeps moving forward without shattering our suspension of disbelief.

That’s good storytelling.

The Choice Mechanic Is A Tool, Not A Goal

“That man you brought . . . I tried, but he was never going to survive.” –Katjaa

This is the biggest thing that makes The Walking Dead games work.

I realized it in episode 2, when I was talking with Katjaa about the band director. We were in the middle of a conversation when out of nowhere the band director (now a walker) attacked her from behind. A moment later I was fighting for my life in the back of a pickup truck, realizing just a little too late that perhaps I should’ve given the axe to someone who wouldn’t totally fail at trying to save my life.

*cough* Mark *cough* Useless *cough*

Did Telltale cut some opportunities for player choices here? Probably.

But they were willing to break the choice mechanic at that moment in order to make a point. That’s when I realized that this story was going to happen whether I liked it or not, and that all I could do was try and do the best I could to make it through in one piece.

And that’s how I like it. I don’t want to play a psychological sandbox game. I’m not carefully crafting a character sheet; I don’t want to have to keep an eye on my light side/dark side meter or my paragon/renegade score. I don’t want to base morality on which path offers shinier gadgets; I don’t want to be rewarded for a tough decision with the pew-pew lazor gun of +5 explosions.

I want to hear a story.

And that’s where Telltale got it right. The story doesn’t exist to provide me with character-crafting opportunities. Instead, the choices only exist to draw me deeper in, to make me invest in the story. They exist to make me feel the way Lee feels when he’s acting through panic, fear, pain, anger, or love. They immerse me in the narrative.

In The Walking Dead, my choices serve the story instead of the other way around . . . and for this gamer, that’s a step in the right direction.

David S. McWilliams

Fantasy, Science Fiction, And Short Stories