What makes a "good" story?

In the last blog post, Philbo looked at what makes a bad story in a game. I’m going to try and look at what makes a good story.  I guess I'm more positive than him. My beard's less impressive though.

 

Games are a pretty unique platform, and the best stories in games are usually built around the game's mechanics. This makes sense, because the ability for the player to actually  take direct action is what sets games apart as a medium. Multiple endings, variable paths to success and the real potential of failure are common elements in the best storylines in video games.

 

To help illustrate my point, I am going to look at two games. The Mass Effect series (technically three games but shut up it is only one story) by Bioware and Ghost Trick by Capcom (of all people). Both of these games make use of gaming-specific actions to further the story.

 Mass Effect in an interesting mix of game and film. The story is primarily relayed in cutscenes and dialogue, like in a traditional medium. What sets it apart is the player's capacity to affect changes in the progression. Did you ever shout "do it! It'll be Awesome!" to Luke when Vader asks him to join the dark side? Well, even if you aren't as mildly evil as I am, you can appreciate Mass Effect giving you the player the choice to either be either the "good cop" or the "bad cop". 

 

While Mass Effect is not totally unique in giving a player a choice, it combines this choice with a compelling enough story that making those choices are often hard. Unlike in Fable by Lionhead, where the choices often boil down to "Help orphan" or "Kick puppy", Mass Effect's decisions are often less black and white. The mix of decent storytelling in a traditional sense, coupled with the control that games can give a player makes for "good storytelling".

 

 While you have most likely heard of Mass Effect if you follow gaming, Ghost Trick is a relatively unknown Nintendo DS game by Capcom. It tells the story of a man, killed under suspicious circumstances, who in death gains the ability to investigate his own demise. I won't ruin the end for you, but if you get the chance to play it, I would reccomend it wholeheartedly. 

 

 While Ghost trick does offer choices, it is not like mass effect in that you can't progress until you figure out the "right" choice. There isn't a moral element to the game. However, what it does give you is another game-only mechanic: the Game Over.

 Game Over, or failure, is a perfect example of game play and story telling intertwining. In a film, you don't really get to see what happens if the protagonist fails. If Jeff Bridges had killed Robert Downey Jr., we still don't get to see a evil army in iron man suits. In books, we don't get to know what happens if heroes had lost hope at any given moment, if Frodo had just given the ring back to Bilbo.

 In Ghost Trick, the game over is used extremely creatively. If you fail to accomplish a task in time or in the right order, you see the immediate results of your mistakes. A thug might catch a little girl, or a loose branch might fall on the hero's helper, preventing her from saving you. This is used to show the player how they should advance (gameplay), but also builds urgency by showing the consequences of each action. The "game over" mechanic  serve to evoke an emotional response from the player.

 

This mixture of gameplay with good writing is vital. It helps to explain why, for video games a traditionally "good story" can seem silly or overwrought. Games like the newer installements of the Final Fantasy series, or the Metal Gear series have fairly decent plots by all accounts. However, the relative inability to influence the story in a meaningful way means it is hard to feel invested in the medium. Unlike a movie, or a book where delivery or verbage can create this investment, a lack of integration into player action in a game causes what should be serious and emotion scenes to seem silly or boring.

 

In short, to have a good story, a game must allow the player to feel involved. It is not enough to have good dialogue and stunning cutscenes, if the story isn't interwoven into the game play. If the story and the game seem to be two distinct elements, then you have failed to create an engaging plot.