*****************************
Let's talk about a concept I learned about last semester in my Literary Theory class, that being the idea of a Sign. The definition of a Sign according to linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is "something that can have meaning." A Sign can be broken down into a Signifier and a Signified. What this means is that an object that can be two different things; the word attached to it, and a person's idea of it. To simplify that, people think in signs, and signifier and signified help us to better understand those same signs. Signifier stands for the concept that a word stands for, whereas the signifier stands for the concept that the signifier represents. If that is somewhat difficult to understand, I'll use the word "cat" as an example: the signifier in this case is the word cat, whereas my idea of the word is a black cat. Because the relationship between words and concept is arbitrary, there is no set in stone concept that ties to the word "cat." Somebody else's idea can be a tabby cat, or a white cat. It doesn't really matter. A word doesn't actually refer to the word, it refers to a loosely defined concept.
tl;dr |
Some of you might be thinking, "Very nice, way to tell yourself that majoring in English wasn't a waste of time. But why talk about it now?" Well, the reason why is that story in video games is an incredibly loosely defined concept. Compare Metal Gear Solid to Castlevania: a pair of Japanese games both published by Konami that have very different storytelling styles. Both use similar ideas - story through gameplay, cutscenes and themes - to tell their story, but the way their stories are told emphasize these differences. While Metal Gear Solid mostly uses cutscenes to tell the story, it also uses strong gameplay to further emphasize the aspects of the plot, such as the stealth elements. Castlevania doesn't use a lot of drawn out cutscenes or gimmicky gameplay and focuses mostly on gameplay to move the story along. Admittedly my only experience with Metal Gear Solid is Snake Eater on the 3DS - I grew up with a Nintendo 64 - and I've only just gotten to The Fear, so my apologies if my argument is as of this moment uninformed. I'm mostly just trying to make a point about the differences in storytelling styles, and from there one can look at the strengths and weaknesses of them.
The initial idea for this post came from reading an article interviewing Shawn McGrath, the creator of Dyad, where he stated that traditional storytelling in games is "idiotic." His argument is that a linear narrative where you make lots of decisions that have little to no impact on the game in titles like Mass Effect and Skyrim is badly done. The article can be found here:
http://bitmob.com/articles/dyad-creator-thinks-traditional-storytelling-in-games-is-idiotic
McGrath does bring up a fair point; if you're not familiar with Egoraptor's series Sequelitis, I recommend you watch the Castlevania and Mega Man episodes, as they do a great job of breaking down the strengths of linear gameplay and telling stories without words. According to Egoraptor, Castlevania's motif is that of horror, and the way the game demonstrates this to the player is by having a delay on the attack, which makes plowing through the challenges that assailed not a very viable option. Mega Man X deals with the theme of getting stronger, and every aspect of the gameplay - beating bosses and getting powerups - all deal with the theme of getting stronger. It's a pretty interesting example to use, considering the main purpose of video is to talk about gameplay and design rather than story. Check it out sometime.
The thing about this is that games were pretty limited back in the era of the NES and SNES. For the most part games with long narratives were limited to RPG series like Mother and Final Fantasy. For the most part, early games were a result of being about escapism in the same manner tha movies were back in the 1930's; they were supposed to be something fantastical that would let us take a vbreak from the normal world. With the next generation of consoles - Playstation, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn - more powerful systems allowed for more emphasis on cinematic storytelling, which gave rise to games like the aforementioned Metal Gear Solid. The point I'm making in bringing these games up is that while McGrath isn't wrong, it's just that his idea of story is more similar to what game creators were forced to work with because of technology limits at the time.
A traditional narrative in a game may be there to make us look at a character and learn about them as they struggle to accomplish a goal. We see the characters act, learn about them, and maybe root for them. They're more akin to movies or novels in that they focus more on characters over the experiences of the player. However, multiple games that follow this formula have been lauded by critics and financially successful because they've focused on an atmosphere that draws the player in despite having no real connection to the game's narrative. Games with distinct atmospheres like Silent Hill 2 and Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker do this to immerse players in the world which helps them sympathize with the characters to an even greater degree. Multiple endings in games like Silent Hill can play in with McGrath's vision of the player's decisions having an impact on the story. Every Silent Hill game has at least three endings that radically change how the characters act at the end.
Is one better than the other? No, I don't think so. While McGrath has valid points, that doesn't mean that his opinion is king and all other opinions are bad. Let's take a look at a game like Persona 4; in the game you have the option to pursue "Social Links" with various characters that you meet that grant you bonuses in battle and creating Personas, Pokemon-esque entities that give you power in battle. However, they also flesh out the characters and tell us about them. However, Social Links don't really contribute to the game's story outside of changing the game's ending sequence slightly, Is this a choice-based system that has no impact on the story like McGrath discussed? You could interpret it as that, yes. But we learn more about the characters that let us look at them in a different way, so his argument that choice-based systems that make no difference on the game isn't completely valid, especially in the case of the characters or Kanji and Naoto, a pair of characters that struggle with sexual and gender identity respectively. These subjects are practically untouched in most games, and learning more about their issues helps the player understand more about how these issues can affects not only the character, but also give a fairly good impression of it overall. Just because these choices might not impact the storyline of the game at all doesn't mean that the player won't see it differently as a result. It's a good example of "story being told without text" that McGrath champions in his interview.
Let's talk about some examples of how to tell a story in a game without using text. Games like Portal and Virtue's Last Reward that build their story around a gameplay mechanic are the bet way to do it, as it's a good way to make the story feel balanced and not have the characters take actions that seem strange, and plot points based around gameplay won't feel illogical. Probably the best game that drives the story through gameplay that I can think of is Virtue's Last Reward. You'll find early on that there is a menu called "Flow" that lets you revisit alternate story paths that you've already ventured down. This can be accessed at any time, can let you revisit any point, and cuts down on backtracking through the story to get the next plot point. However, the big twist of the game is that the main character, Sigma, can project his consciousness into alternate timeline versions of himself. Additionally, certain plot paths can't be accessed until you've found out information from other plot paths that fit the situation. During especially tense bomb defusal scenes, the player is encouraged to jump back to the right spot if they haven't written down the passwords needed to defuse the bombs. Additionally, the memo screen becomes blurrier and less clear for each jump you make, tying in with Sigma's difficulty in remembering things from alternate timelines.
Now we'll compare the Flow menu from Virtue's Last Reward with the Seventh Fonon plot point in Tales of the Abyss. It's a type of magic that a certain character possesses, but about halfway through the story, the main character Luke comes into possession of this ability. Luke uses the Seventh Fonon's powers in the plot several times, but this only happens during cutscenes; Luke can never use huge explosions or magic fixes in the plague the game's cutscenes to supplement himself in battles, so the Seventh Fonon just feels like a hamfisted plot point that only serves to make an already dreadful story feel even more ridiculous. With all the words it devotes to talking about the Seventh Fonon, we don't get to use it once or even really realize its effects because of how detached the cutscenes are from the world that game takes place in. Virtue's Last Reward's Flow mechanic is a great example of a mechanic that lets you make multiple decisions that have different impacts on the story like McGrath supports, and the game itself is a visual novel, meaning that its storyline is more along the lines of a complex narrative.
Welcome to the first third of the game! |
Stories in gaming are the perfect example of a Signified. Because there are so many ideas of what a signified can be , it's no wonder that story in gaming has so many different interpretations in different games. This post isn't a rant on how to tell your story, but to play devil's advocate against McGrath's decrying of the traditional narrative in a game. Nope, that comes next time when I take on a game franchise that I legitimately despise and thought should be prematurely ended despite the creator's intents to make multiple more entries into the series. Oh, and it'll be a timely release for those trying to find hints to what I'm talking about. See you in February!
No comments:
Post a Comment