Storytelling in Video Games

Storytelling & Video Games

Game Design and Exploration

The early video games certainly didn’t have much in the way of storytelling involved. Also, most early video games had good and bad characters with an obvious goal. Such as saving the world from danger or rescuing a princess. The progression would show through what level you reached or the high scores. As technology started evolved game developers started to shift to creating compelling stories to keep players interested. Games like Myst mark a shift in the way game designers thought about players and their involvement in games.

Myst at the time was a video game that was completely different from anything else. There were no bad guys, high scores, or action. You played the role of the stranger who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. You solved puzzles, traveled to other worlds, and used the clues you found to figure out the story.

Myst has different endings depending on the choices the player makes. It was engaging to players because it appealed to the sense of wanting to know more. As the player explores the world the drive to know what happened would only grow as they progressed through the game. As a result, Myst gave players bits of the story and allowed the player to try to figure it out. The innate need to know what happened and the wonder of discovering the world of Myst made it engaging.

The puzzles were captivating but were not at the forefront. Most noteworthy is how Myst helped shape what storytelling in video games has become today by bringing a new form of gameplay to the industry. By getting the player more involved with the game progress through the use of narrative and player interaction.

Gamer Experience

Video Games do something that other forms of storytelling don’t put you in the experience. You are given the control to make things happen or, have things happen to you. It involves more interaction than just watching the story play out. In games like Detroit: Become Human, you are given a brief pause to make choices that will affect the path of the storyline. The characters may survive or die depending on the choices made, which serve to shape a story that’s customized by the player.

Using interactive controls and player choices the player can push the story forward. Therefore through this type of gameplay, the player can play through the game multiple times. Games that allow player choices and interactive controls provide an exciting customized experience for each player.

Player and the Characters

Video games offer an immersive experience for the player. Because you roleplay as the main character. It’s a powerful experience when emotional events both good and bad happen to the character. It feels as if it is happening to you. It potentially provides a much stronger connection than you’d feel to a character in a book or TV series. Games like Life is Strange and Telltale’s The Walking the Dead allows players to set up emotional connections to the characters.

Through the use of serious emotional experiences, players experience fear, excitement, and sadness. Those emotions are what drive the story forward while making players want to continue playing to see what happens to the characters they become emotionally invested in.

Conclusion

While the narrative in video games can range from simple to complex. In early games, the plot was just an outline that game designers filled in with puzzles or action. But, today they are immersive interactive experiences where a player becomes invested in the story as the game progress. Video games have pushed boundaries by telling both emotionally gripping and cinematic stores. The way that video games tell stories will continue to evolve even more as game designers create a develop new ways to merge player interaction.

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