Story Telling
9 November, 2008. | Post by DasatiTo continue my theme of the moment, this blogs about the story telling ability of games. I believe games are in a truly unique position when it comes to telling a story as you can actually interact with the story.
The more established methods of story telling such as books, films and simple word of mouth each have their own unique attributes that help them to tell the story. However none of them are able to allow you to get involved in the story. When your watching a film, reading a book or listening to someone tell a story your just sat their not doing anything as you listen/watch/read the story unfolding before you.
With games its different. A game allows you to take control of one, some or all of the charachters. This allows for a much stronger emotional stake in the story. Playing your way through a game with one charachter, if the game/story is done well you can’t help but start to care about the charachter and what happens to them. You want them to survive/achieve their goal. You can also depending on the game shape the charachter as you fit. You could make them a kind caring helpful soul or a genocidal maniac.
I recently had an example of the story telling power of games. It concerns the game Gears of War 2. I wont go into details in case anyone reading this is still playing or going to play the game (i hate spoilers) but suffice to say there is one point in the game when something deeply tragic happens to one of the main charachters, a charachter who you’ve been to hell and back with and you can’t help but feel saddened, even though you know its not real.
As technology advances game designers seem to focus more and more on flashy graphics, sometimes at the expense of other elements of the game. I just hope in the future game designers remember to seize the story telling power of games to tell some truly great stories.
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