About story narrative

[Omnires]

As some of you know I like to have a good story and lore in games on top of the good game play. In my mind sometimes having a good story in a game can keep me coming back for more just because I want to know what happens. Even more so if the things I do can effect the game world in someway. And I love games that make the player think. Not just about how to clear this mission or kill this enemy, but about what whether or not they are right and could they live with themselves if it turns out their are wrong.

I bring this up because it is something I often think about a lot in games and also I because think this video can better show what I mean without a wall of text.

Personally, I always questioned games where I'm the hero out to save the world, but at the same time I single handedly killed off whole species of animals and plants just because they was between me and what I wanted or where I wanted to go. No one questions the fact that maybe the reason the wolves attacked was not because they are evil but because the things they normally eat is no longer around and starvation or sickness drove them to attack just to try and stay alive one more day. But no one thinks of that. It is just, there are some wolves in my path time to kill them.

I think it would be great if NPCs and even the player character stopped to question what they are doing from time to time. Because yes, you are out to save the world and stuff. But does your actions make you just as bad as what you are fighting against?

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

And

I love games that make the player think. Not just about how to clear this mission or kill this enemy, but about what whether or not they are right and could they live with themselves if it turns out their are wrong.

So do I. As long as you actually have a choice. Some devs make their games so that it looks like you have an choice but it's really just the illusion of a choice. (You can either do the action OR stop playing the game.) That's just preaching and that gets under my skin. Spec Ops: The Line, was like that and some of the more recent COD games are like that or the Stanley Parable. Mass Effect series had both at times which was nice.

Oh and Stories: The Path of Destinies really shows your point. In that game your story choices will alter the plot line that will lead to different endings. That game has a ton of different endings and the game lets you keeping replaying it to find the other endings even if you discover the "true ending."

[edit]
or say in the game series Styx.
In that one you play basically a goblin ninja with the weakness of being easily killable. Anyhow, the game doesn't actually tell you that you can not kill everyone but your actual targets. It's up to the player to decide if he or she wants to murder everyone they see or patiently pass by everyone or kill a few people + the game's target. In the 2nd game, the devs decided to give the player more chances to get away with not killing people to accomplish Sytx's goals. .... though this requires a lot of patience and the need to actually listen to the NPCs while not being seen. The cool thing is that this choice isn't explicitly told to the player unless they check the achievement list outside the game.

 

[HumanTrainingBot]

This reminds me of one of the quests I completed in Torchlight 2. You need meet a woman outside of a cave and she asks you to save her husband and their babies. You fight your way through the cave with plenty of spiders and goblins to block your path. Once you reach the end of the cave, you find the woman's husband and he's surrounded by spiders. You can either mindlessly kill all the spiders that look like they're ready to attack the husband, or you take a moment to see that the UI says they're not an enemy. Once you talk with the husband, you find out that those spiders were the "babies" his wife had mentioned at the entrance of the cave. So you either just killed all but one of the entities you were supposed to rescue, or you take a moment to look at the situation before you chop everything to pieces and find out that not all spiders are enemies to kill.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

This reminds me of one of the quests I completed in Torchlight 2. You need meet a woman outside of a cave and she asks you to save her husband and their babies. You fight your way through the cave with plenty of spiders and goblins to block your path. Once you reach the end of the cave, you find the woman's husband and he's surrounded by spiders. You can either mindlessly kill all the spiders that look like they're ready to attack the husband, or you take a moment to see that the UI says they're not an enemy. Once you talk with the husband, you find out that those spiders were the "babies" his wife had mentioned at the entrance of the cave. So you either just killed all but one of the entities you were supposed to rescue, or you take a moment to look at the situation before you chop everything to pieces and find out that not all spiders are enemies to kill.

That reminds me of a quest in neverwinter nights. ...if some details are wrong, I'm sorry it's been years....
A lady asks you to save her baby from inside a house that is being attacked and on fire. You can do so and then you can haggle with the lady over the price of the baby's return to her OR you can decide to keep the baby and kill the lady OR be nice and hand the baby over to the lady OR just ignore the quest. Depending on what you did would affect your karma to either the good side or the evil side.

I remember playing this game with some friends. I played a cowardly but really fast thief. .. heh I even remember the conversation we had over it...

Tom: WHAT DID YOU DO!
me: what?
Tom: Our collective karma went to evil and you're the only one not with the rest of us.
me: This lady wanted me to save her baby from a burning house.
Tom: You told her no didn't you?
me: No. I saved the baby from the house and evil people things inside.
Tom: So why?
me: Well I figured the baby is valuable to the lady so I tried to haggle for the return.
Tom: You bastard. Stay near the party now.
Jason: What? Isn't the whole reason we got a thief is because we needed a good scout who is fast and agile? What's the point if we don't use him?
Tom: We are trying to reap the benefits of the good side, how can we do that if he keeps doing evil crap?
Jason: Ask him not to do evil crap?

 

[Dark]

What?

Dude really those "wolves" are 1's and 0's with 0 interest in you killing them or finding shit to eat. imagination is one thing but there are plenty of animals/people in the real world with actual problems so i could give a dam about some wolf made up of nothing. There in my way kill them.

 

[Omnires]

One of my top 10 favorite games of all time is Deus Ex (the first one that came out in 2000). Even to this day when I tell people about Deus Ex, I tell them that it is less of a game and more of an experience. This is because the choices you make in the game matter and things you may have said or did at the start of the game can come back at you later in the game. It is one of the only games I ever played where you can clear the whole game without killing anyone, not even the bosses. Hell you could even talk your way out of a fight with some of bosses and make deals with them to join you or you join them.

For example. *warning it has been over 15 years since I last played the game the details might be wrong but the main idea is still the same.*
Near the start of the while I was still learning the controls I hear a woman call for help in one of the dark back allies. Now, I could have just kept running past the cries for help to go to the mission objective or turn down this road to see what is going on. So I go see what is happening. There is a woman being threaten by some guys. Now again I could walk away, or just blindly attack the men or even attack the woman, or I could try talking them first. So I talked to them, the woman is a drug addict and prostitute and men are upset because they say she stole a large amount of money from them. But the woman says she knows nothing about it and they are just blaming her so they don't get into trouble with their gang boss for losing the money. Now I could walk away, or side with the men, or side with the woman. If I walk away odds are they will kill her, if side with the men I might be able to talk them out of killing her, and if the side with the woman I will be making myself a target. So I sided with the woman because there was something about one guy's story that didn't add up, and I was attacked along with the woman. But rather than killing the guys I just knocked them out and called for law enforcement to pick them up. After talking to the woman a bit more I learn about how she wanted to turn her life around and to help other people in trouble like herself. Now I could just ignore her, or I could turn her into law enforcement too for prostitution, or I could help her by giving her some money and letting her escape. So I give her what I could and let her go. But before she left she told me that she would never forget that I did for her and will repay me if she ever gets the chance.

That would be the end of the story in most games, but not in this one. Because as long as you or no one else kills her she will show up in other parts of the game. And if you help her you'll see the effects you have on her turning her life around. Until the a point near the end of the game where if was like me and helped her a lot, she becomes the leader of group who's man focus is to help the poor, the sick, and fight things like human trafficking. And they way she pays me back is not with money but with things like information. Because she helped and work with people other ignore she could tell you what different factions in the game are up to because someone she works with might have overheard something. Like the password to get into a hidden base or what rout a drug lord is going to use for a shipment or some other thing the might be useful to people who want to do things like avoid fighting by using stealth because a homeless guy knows where one of the air vents the building is because he sleeps near it to stay warm on cold nights.

What?

Dude really those "wolves" are 1's and 0's with 0 interest in you killing them or finding shit to eat. imagination is one thing but there are plenty of animals/people in the real world with actual problems so i could give a dam about some wolf made up of nothing. There in my way kill them.

And that is what we call having psychopathic tendencies. Clearly showing impaired empathy and remorse.

I'm not saying you are wrong or anything. It is a game and we are playing to have fun. But the idea of what is "fun" changes from person to person. And for some people that means just turning off their brains to mindlessly kill and destroy everything around them without question in a made up pretend world. While for some other people the fun comes in the form of using the made up worlds to explore different prospectives and/or looking into the effects that existential problems would have on the characters (and maybe even the players) in the game world. Games are made to be fun above all, but a lot of people also use games to help them learn things about themselves and the world as whole.

Existentialism: Crash Course Philosophy #16

P.s.
Deus Ex is also on some people's list of video games that predicted the future.
7 Times Games Predicted the Future With Spooky Accuracy