Video Game Stories

I got into video games when I was young but until I was 12, all I played were simple 2D platformer/action cartridges on my Gameboy Advance SP (the silver one that looks like it went to the same tattoo parlour as Mike Tyson). These games were essentially handheld arcade games; story was a luxury that most of them chose to skip over, the few cartridges that did have some form of a rudimentary narrative were either told through text boxes or were implied via the age-old technique of turning kids films into crappy but insanely difficult game adaptations. They might not have been that difficult, I could have just been stupid – a common symptom found in 7-year-olds.

When I got my first console that wasn’t a Wii (because everyone had a Wii), I was mind blown. I was no longer playing the same handful of levels ad infinitum (partly because I couldn’t progress and partly because the levels were repetitive), I was finally getting to experience a story. I wasn’t passively watching Indiana Jones running away from the boulder and then imagining myself as the whip-wielder, I was him. I got to run across rooftops, fight off aliens, and pick locks in beautifully textured worlds, this time the levels weren’t just a blur of sequences but an intricate and rich story. It was amazing… or was it?

The correct answer is no.

Length

Games tend to be too long, but they can’t be short either. If I am going to spend €60 for a retail game, a price which seems to be increasing with the new generation of consoles, then I want to get my money’s worth. But what does that even mean? How do I even qualify what ‘worth’ is? As simple as it may seem, the correct question is one of quality vs quantity. When it comes to luxury items, which video games are, then I would like to think that quality is the selling point, consumers deciding on which product to buy rather than trying to figure out which one is going to take longer to consume.

Wrong. Video games are not a product made for quality, but they are the discarded child of the sunk cost fallacy and Stockholm Syndrome; the longer a game forces you to play it, the better. Obviously, the genre a game falls into dictates the type of length, quality, and style of the game but let’s take the tried-and-true single player story game. For reasons that can only be assumed to be the result of a lack of creative initiative and/or prowess, single player games generally find themselves falling into the same trap: a three-or-so hour story spread across 14 hours of repetitive dialogue, empty and irrelevant subplots, and the same boss fight thrown in seven times except this time they shoot fire instead of lightening.

The first time I played Bioshock Infinite was when I was 13 and I thought it was one of the best pieces of storytelling I had ever witnessed. The premise was cool, the gameplay was fast-paced, and the visuals were breath-taking: rather than the horror-inclined underwater passages of the first two Bioshocks, Infinite was set high above the clouds and focused more on first-person shooting instead of the slower thriller the franchise was famous for. After replaying it last summer, I discovered that 13-year-old and 7-year-old Daniel had a lot more in common that I would care to admit. The plot was drawn out, the gameplay was tedious, and the worst culprit was the amount of times I got to my objective just to be told that the princess is in another castle. But the ending was still as climactic as I remember it being, so point for teenage me.

Today, the indie scene is making strides at remedying the issue. Short games with small price tags mean that no one gets upset at being ‘ripped off’, the indie tag identifying the title as a short film rather than a full feature.

Open-World

If we are complaining about overly long games, then it is time to talk about the open world gimmick. In 2022, every game is open world. Rather than creating 15 amazing levels, it seems that audiences clearly prefer a lush world where I, as the protagonist, can explore to my heart’s content without being constricted by pesky invisible walls and warnings to return to the mission area. Instead, we get games that create soulless worlds that are filled with the same three side-missions (1. Go follow that person, 2. Go fight that person, 3. Go follow that person and then fight them), annoying collectibles that provide nothing but an achievement/trophy, and a list of side characters that are about as interesting as white bread.

To make matters worse, the moment I ask what’s wrong with level-based experiences I instantly get bombarded about how levels are too short, they are limiting, and that The Witcher 3 is the best game ever made. I love The Witcher franchise, but Wild Hunt is simply way too long. When I started playing it, I felt like my prayers had been answered: finally, an open world game that actually looks emotionally engaging. After playing the same mission for the nth time, both as a side and main, my interest in it quickly faded (instead of following someone and fighting them, I had to track a beast and then kill it. Very different).

And now level-based franchises are switching to open-world. Halo Infinite is fun, but how many times am I going to capture an enemy base before I can finally get a level that looks interesting. After finishing the game, I’m still waiting.

Active Experiences

Video games are a creative minefield. On one hand they are an active experience, the player controlling each action as they fight their way through each boss battle and puzzle room. But on the other, it is impossible to give a player full control of their character as each game needs to be programmed, every possible eventuality pre-planned and made possible before I even get to touch the box. Sort of like Schrödinger’s cat (but not at all), players are both the character and not. It may be me looking around for extra loot and customising my armour and loadout but the moment a cutscene starts I am instantly thrown out of it. I am no longer Ezio, instead I’m just watching him.

The experience is inherently oxymoronic. You can’t have, at least with current technology, your cake and eat it to, it is simply impossible to create a game that accounts for every interaction. And even if you do, you will still need to find a way to give a player control during cutscenes, altering dialogue and actions to fit the will of the player. It’s almost as if there is a genre for that.

RPGs

Role-playing games come in many different shapes and sizes, but for now let’s focus on the ones that gives a player the power to alter the narrative. Through a series of choices, I can not only dictate how I act as I walk around Skyrim but also how I speak as I am allowed to choose how my character responds. On paper, this is the best solution for the perfect video game story and also the closest a video game can get to the human-powered system of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons, a dice-roller famed for its endless possibilities.

In reality, these RPGs are nothing more than empty promises. When speaking to a random NPC, you aren’t asked to input your character’s response but are instead given a list of options to choose from. Unlike Zork, I can’t just type in what I want to say as that would mean the game would have to account for every single possibility, meaning that voice actors would have to record sounds like Siri rather than emotional lines. And even then, text adventures are infamous for their level of difficulty and bizarre interactions as they allow a level of unneeded freedom, if that is even possible (after getting stuck and not knowing how to progress for days, yes, there is).

Right now, I am playing through the Mass Effect Trilogy for my first time in years but my third in total. Mass Effect is a sci-fi third-person shooter RPG complete with all the works: loot-able items that are only a fraction better than the stuff I already have, side quests that are more filler than fun, and a plot that is definitely longer than it needs to be. But what Mass Effect does have is a truly interactable story.

Nearly every dialogue option is decided by the player through a simple mid-conversation menu. Generally speaking, these minute differences in conversations rarely matter unless you are playing a Telltale game where the only thing that does matter is the dialogue, but Mass Effect is shaped by its choices. As you play the trilogy, you can import your save from the previous game so every decision, every character that you chose to kill or let die is still dead, completely changing the narrative. When I played them for the first time, my friends and I would trade our narratives between each other, and the differences were incredible. Not only were relationships completely alien, but main characters were missing from their playthroughs as they were killed in the first game while in my playthrough they were still playing a pivotal role.

Yet as the trilogy wrapped up, people were upset that the ending was essentially three variations of the same flavour. With all those possibilities, I can completely understand having to fit three games worth of decisions into several buckets rather than a litany of possible endings. I can’t imagine wrapping up that franchise satisfyingly while also having every ending be different, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t feel disappointed when a game that made me feel like I was always in control suddenly takes it away.

Gameplay, Graphics, & Multiplayer

Story isn’t the only thing games have to offer. As graphics get better and systems advance, story has always taken a backseat to what is truly the heart of gaming: gameplay. As a player, I am going to be spending 90% of my time controlling my character, fighting enemies or completing whatever challenge is currently pinged on my mini-map, so it is completely understandable that the main draw for many is how the game plays rather than its window dressing. But long gone is the time of Mario 64 where the game functioning is an achievement within itself and, as someone who has completed the polygonal 3D platformer, I am glad. I don’t want to start playing a game and find it difficult just to move the camera around.

Not only do I understand the draw for amazing gameplay, but I would also classify the functionality of a game to be higher on the list of priorities than the story. It seems absurd that today we must search for games on a basis of whether or not they run, but glitches can still be found far and wide. I can’t tell you how excited I was for Cyberpunk 2077, hopefully one day it will be finished so I can explore the vibrantly dystopian Night City.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the perfect game is functional, glitch-less, and, as the Lord decreed it, open-world. Is the next priority story? Nope, because what actually matters is how pretty the shadows are. I like pretty games as much as the next person, but rather than wasting time giving me graphical remasters of classics that I never asked for, could I please get a sequel to L.A. Noire, a game that chose amazing levels over an interesting open-world (yes, the game is open-world but that is more a by-product of allowing the player to choose which crime-related scenes to investigate rather than an incentive to explore 1940s L.A.).

And then we have multiplayer. So, the perfect game is functional, glitch-less, open-world, and pleasing to look at, so before we get to writing that pesky story let’s give players a multiplayer mode. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy getting destroyed by kids younger than me in Halo, but there has been a clear shift in what the average triple A game should include. Once something I would have deemed as extra, multiplayer modes have become games in their own right, tricking gullible consumers into paying €60 for four maps, three game modes, no story, and the irony of having to play the same Call of Duty you played last year. Surprisingly, CoD have generally delivered satisfying single player campaigns throughout the years, but as the franchise has made the majority of its multiplayer free-to-play, I doubt that will be the case for long.

Character Driven

There are games that have little to no story at all. Take Stardew Valley, an indie game about being a farmer in a small town. Narratively speaking, there are new sections and events that mark your progress as you grow your farm from wheat to fruit to live stock, but what drives it is the satisfaction of seeing your own progress and reaping the rewards from the expensive Deluxe Barn you just ordered. Yet there is an emotional hook: Pelican Town. This quaint little village is filled with people ranging from the local shop owner to the drunken mum of the primary school teacher to the annoying mayor that cares way too much. Each character has their own plot line and you can choose who to befriend, who to interact with; who to care about.

Rather than choosing how the main plot is shaped, the level of choice refers to which stories you get to witness. This supplements and supports that main draw of the game which is repetitive yet constantly evolving – closer to a variety of overlapping minigames rather than a continuous loop of monotony.

Animal Crossing has dominated this archetype for a long time and I can see why. I have never played an AC game, but I love watching my girlfriend play if I just feel like back seating for a while. While there is no story, I can see my girlfriend immersing herself into the world, caring about her islanders as if they are going to revolt because she still hasn’t taken down her island’s Christmas decorations.

Dark Souls & Breath of the Wild

Defining the Dark Souls franchise as RPGs is a stretch of the imagination. While I am technically deciding how the game is played through a levelling system, that would be like calling Battlefield an RPG because I get to choose my own guns and grenades. Rather, it is an extremely sadistic and challenging gameplay-focused fantasy series that is closer to Animal Crossing than Persona 5. With very few cutscenes, most of the narrative is experienced through brief dialogue with characters dressed up in onion armour or item descriptions, of which there are many.

But I love them. More specifically, I love Bloodborne, the gothic Lovecraftian step-brother of the medieval and magic focused Souls games. Although there is very little plot, the world is so rich with story that it would be unfair to say that these games have none. Instead of spoon feeding me, I have to seek out the lore for this nightmarish landscape myself and when I did, I was rewarded. It may not have affected how I played the game, but it certainly showed me a new perspective at what used to be a one-dimensional world that only served as a backdrop to difficult gameplay.

One of the highest rated games of all time, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is, for all intents and purposes, a kid’s version of Dark Souls. It isn’t an exact copy, but when it comes to story, there are very few interactions and narrative beats that must be seen by the player, most of the time they are memories that need to be found throughout the open-world of Hyrule. Even the order in which boss battles can be taken is up to the player, the entire world open for exploration the moment the tutorial is completed. Take note game developers, that’s how you create a faux sandbox.

Last of Us 2

As a professionally and unremarkably average gamer, I would like to decree that Last of Us 2 is the best game ever made. Yes, it is pretty, has fun, fast-paced, and relatively unbroken gameplay but above all, it is the best story I have ever witnessed. Spanning over 20 hours, there wasn’t a single second where I wasn’t hooked, something that developers Naughty Dog have always managed to achieve but have only now perfected. Be warned, spoilers ahead.

Last of Us 2 is a game about everyone’s favourite apocalypse: zombies (I know they are technically infected and not undead, but they walk, groan, and bite like zombies, so zombies they shall be). At the start of the game, you play as Ellie, a main character from the first game but not the protagonist. That would be Joel, and he gets killed in the first few hours of the second game by Abby, the big baddy of this masterpiece. The goal is clear: Ellie needs to avenge Joel by killing Abby.

Ellie hunts Abby down and as she does, she becomes consumed by revenge. She tracks down Abby’s friends, killing each of them as they stand in her way. Eventually, it is clear that Ellie is no longer driven by the same thing I am, she has become the villain as she leaves a river of blood behind her, uncaring of who gets hurt as long as she gets the closure she seeks. I began to feel distant from her as I was forced to watch her (see above) lose her humanity.

And then the game completely changes: rather than continuing as Ellie we get to see the same few days but from Abby’s perspective. Not only have I been feeling out of sync with a game that started so well, but now I have to play as the person that hurt me and Ellie so much at the beginning of this turbulent journey. And it works. By forcing the player to feel distant from Ellie, I was able to see Abby in a different light. If the hero can be forcibly turned into the villain, then why can’t the villain grow into the hero?

Naughty Dog have always created successful narrative-driven action games, Uncharted 4 culminating everything that was great about its predecessors to create a lean experience. But Last of Us 2 is more than a game, more than a story. It is a challenge that forces you to revaluate your own perspective, not just about the game but the way I see everything. Instead of stretching out its story to a breaking point, it tells the same story from two different perspectives as you see how our ‘hero’ has slaughtered all of Abby’s friends in cold blood. Ellie may be driven, but after everything she has done, how can she be redeemed?

The story isn’t long for the sake of being long, it is long because I needed to feel like I was running a marathon. If it was shorter, I wouldn’t have exploded with emotions when Ellie and Abby have their final fight; I wouldn’t have despised myself for all the things I did as Ellie; I wouldn’t have seen Abby’s story that, if anything, justifies her to be the hero. But I still loved Ellie for all the time we spent together and hated Abby for what she did. I felt conflicted as to how I should feel, and that was the intention. Life is messy, especially in the apocalypse, and there are no heroes and villains. There are only stories.