Limits on Game Storylines

by Josh Fletcher 

After reading Colin Stewart's good editorial named "Stories in Role-Playing Games," it left an impression on me. Mr. Stewart is most definitely right. A game cannot have a storyline comparable to a movie or film. But why? Again, Mr. Stewart was on the right track, but I have a different idea, one that I feel may uncover more of the reasons why game storylines are often pretty weak.

Games are interactive. This means that there can be no "dull spots," no times when the player is just standing around, doing nothing. Movies are filmed and constructed so that there is always action or conflict, something that makes people want to keep watching. Books are likewise. Since games have to be the same way, they take the same approach, putting in lots of action and conflicts. Still, though, games have another wrinkle to contend with: interactivity. The player always needs something very direct to do, or else they will get bored and turn off the game. That means players need something of a motivation. You need to know WHY you are blowing up a reactor, or going on this spooky train, etc. This allows a game to have a decent story by default. Implementing a larger story, however, ultimately "steals" interactivity from the gamer.

Think about this. Final Fantasy VII had a superb story for a videogame. It was deep and full and involving. Most of the characters had rock-solid pasts and motivations. Still, the game was frustratingly linear. The structure of the game was: "Go to point A, look at a bit more of the story. Point A also tells you where to go next (in bold and enlarged type, no less). Go there, and look at more of the story. Now repeat over and over again." Get my point? A larger and more involved story automatically strips away non-linearity. In the opposite extreme, Daggerfall for the PC let gamers do almost ANYTHING they want, but the storyline is very weak, with little sense of direction. Another example is a flight sim game. If the game has a dynamic campaign (meaning that a new campaign is automatically built based on the success of failure of the previous mission), then the story may be very vague, like "Wage war with this country." If the game has a rigid, pre-set campaign, then the story is able to have more details like "The attack on the USS Consititutional has turned the tide of battle. It is up to you to counterattack with this..." Can you see the inevitable trade-off RPG designers have to make?

This is why games will never have the same type of thrilling story present in movies like The Godfather. No game can have such a deep and satisfying storyline without stripping away much of what makes a game fun: the non-linearity and interaction. Games like Final Fantasy III "hide" their linearity amazingly well, but that's because of careful design and planning more than anything else. So be prepared for a trade-off, and don't get mad if you don't get an movie-caliber storyline with superb interaction and a non-linear structure. It just isn't going to happen.