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In Which I Confess to Being A Liar
By Corvus | March 5, 2008
A liar?! Oh, c’mon. You can’t be too surprised to find out that I’m a self professed liar! What do you think “professional storyteller” really means, anyway? My confession is this–my last two posts were complete fabrications. Well, the titles were anyway. While it’s all well and good to say that character relationships are where good storytelling lies, the audience (by and large) isn’t going to interpret it that way. They’re going to remember the character. They’re going to remember that character’s back story. But as so many people pointed out in the comments, how those backstory elements are communicated and how those relationships define the character make all the difference between a pedestrian rehash of plots we already know and compelling tales about characters we grow to love.
A stock warrior NPC with no past is boring. A stock warrior NPC who tells the audience, via a canned dialog dump, all about how he lost his family in the Spider Wars of Ought Three is only marginally more interesting. A taciturn warrior NPC named Dar A’len who tends to become a little unhinged while fighting the Pit Spiders of Dun Haree and can be heard to whimper, “I’m so sorry, mommy,” as he delivers a killing blow is intriguing and perhaps a little scary. If the people in Dar A’len’s village make cryptic comments to you about his adequacy as a warrior while you restock in their shops, it becomes clear that Dar A’len has a history and relationships. Slowly, oh so slowly, in drips and drabs, the player should be allowed to build a picture of Dar A’len’s past. Plenty of holes should be left in the image, to allow the player to fully bring their own experiences, their own expectations to the story they’re building as they travel with this cryptic warrior.
Character design is critical to the success of your storytelling efforts. We’re visual people. When we read character descriptions in a book, we build a mental image of that character. We love strongly designed characters in the movies–Darth Vader, Stanley Kowalski (I seem to be on a Streetcar kick, eh?), Neo, Yojimbo (Kurosawa’s, not the rabbit). But it’s important that the design not merely be “cool.” The design must be reflective of… yes, the character’s relationships to their environment and culture. I mentioned Lara Croft in yesterday’s post and I’m surprised no one called me on it. Lara Croft suffers from terrible character design, simply terrible. Enormous breasts and short shorts are not reflective of her relationship with the environment. These details were included in her design for one reason–sex appeal and marketability. But ultimately, I feel they have almost nothing to do with the franchise’s continued success. Gameplay, or to put it another way–the evolution of her relationship with her environment–is what makes the Tombraider series a going concern. If you don’t believe me, look at the number of games that tried to follow the “large breast and tight clothes” formula to success, only to fail miserably due to terrible expression of environmental relationships–Sin and Heavy Metal FAKK 2, to name two prime examples.
The primary point I’m driving to here is that while backstory and character design are critical components of building a successful narrative, they should in no way exist independently of the other components–including gameplay. Hiring a writer to inform your audience of character backstory after the videogame’s design is finalized is like hiring an electrician to wire a house when the builders have just finished putting up the drywall. Designing your characters without an understanding of their relationships is like hiring an interior decorator before you’ve drafted the blueprints.
It is critical to the success of our industry and the advancement of our art for every single person working on a videogame to realize that they’re storytellers. Perhaps more importantly, they must realize that everyone else is a storyteller too. In this way, everyone can work together to bring their unique and varied experiences to the creation pool.
Tagged:backstory, character design, storytelling, videogames. | 1 Comment »
March 5th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Great post, Corvus… it addresses most of my questions about the last two entries.
In terms of the “how” of game storytelling, I think you’ve hit on something essential. Commercial games seem to be terrified of developing a backstory without pumping it, through expository IV-drip, directy into the players’ veins. The common developers’ wisdom seems to be: “If we’re going to the trouble of MAKING a story, why not flaunt it?” The unfortunate result is that, with characters, backstory and relationships flapping in the breeze, we are much more aware of the designers trying to force-feed us narrative than we are attuned to the story itself.
The LACK of expository blab is a huge part of what makes Ico and Shadow of the Colossus such compelling games… those characters never say a word unless they absolutely have to, and even then, it’s often in an untranslated nonsense language. This narrative reserve allows players to invest themselves personally in the events, and gives them a sense that there’s something meaningful going on below the surface of the gameplay.
It was a pleasure meeting you at GDC. It’s good to see that there are other people out there tackling the issues of game writing intelligently: I’ll be checking in at Man Bytes Blog whenever I can.