Interactive Storytelling

When it comes to the future of story telling in games with questions like, where does it go from here? It is a difficult question to answer, for one there is a multitude of ways to tell a story. I suppose it can be put down to cut scenes and a story that is told while the player is still interacting with the game. The fact that unlike most forms of media, you can actually interact with it to further progress the story or to make choices to decide where the story goes, it becomes an active experience rather than a passive one.

I fall more into the category of telling a story while the player is interacting with the game, rather than sitting back and watching a cut scene. For one reason alone, games are an interactive form of entertainment so the more you can do to immerse the player in the world the stronger the connection can be to that world. That is not to say cut scenes are not useful far from it. They have there place but they can be certainly be relied upon to much where a game becomes dependant on that aspect. It becomes gameplay, cut scene, gameplay for 12 hours rather than a seamless experience.

Personally I would like to see games focus more on choice, I see choice as a powerful tool that can enhance an overall experience as the player would feel more directly involved with the game. Fallout New Vegas is a good example of this mechanic where you can play the game fitting to your play style and choices. With the amount of people to speak to and direction possible, you can focus the story and alliances to your choosing. 

Fallout, a game all about choice

An important thing about choices in games is not to allow the choices to be black or white. Recently Ken Levine talked about choice in a recent Giant Bomb interview in regards to his current project Bioshock Infinite. His goal is to allow a choice that leaves you wondering what consequences will, rather than the typical good vs. evil approach. He used a good example of this blurred choice system, in which you save a dentist who you would later see in the game pulling out gold teeth out of a stack of dead bodies and he would then hand you a sack of gold teeth.

Making choices uncertain are vital to allow the player choices to be clouded so there is no definitive good vs. evil, ultimately this can create the approach to tackle a game in one direction or another rather than natural choices you would make throughout the course of the game.

A game world and its population is as much a part of the story as the main character themselves. If you have a world, which reacts to the actions of the player it breaks down a wall that lets you in.

I do enjoy and I feel it can drastically enhance an experience is to allow the story to flow through the game world, a game that does this well is Uncharted, it really puts you into an experience that feels alive and dynamic with set pieces and attention to detail that allows the world to come to life.

Creating a feeling where anything can happen and there is cause and effect to actions, a ripple effect.

This is not something new either, I remember the radio stations in GTA III, simple stuff like bridges being closed or a gang war or something you were recently involved in allows things to be grounded that sets you in that world, making it feel like your actions are having an effect.

This concept can be further improve in the future, using GTA as an example seeing newspapers with recent events on the front page or a news report outside of a TV shop. Small things that add to the detail of the world which makes it a richer experience. This can also be good to see how the game world reacts to the player and how the player reacts to theses headlines and such. A superhero game where you think you are making the right choice but the public distrust you.

Presenting a story can be just as important as the story itself Creating an experience that is fluid from start to finish and by this I mean the removal of the typical loading screens. This is possible through background loading during a level or simply hiding the fact something is loading in the background during a scene that would separate one level to the next. A nice example is The Darkness, which covered up with the main character talking about experiences that provide a background to a location or thoughts running through his head. Every time that a loading screen pops up it reinforces the fact that this is a game and it can kill a lot of the momentum the story had going for it. 

Story telling has an infinite amount of potential for the future considering the many different genres and types of platforms games are now played the possibility of exploring these different avenues is greater than ever.