Some article on game storytelling

[Llyranor]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060426/noyle_01.shtml

 

Haven't read through it yet, but it seems like an interesting read.

 

At first glance, it would seem that the rich set of techniques available to us from the visual media of film and television is ideally suited to creating compelling game characters. This is true, but only for the NPCs. These techniques are irrelevant to presenting a player character, because a first-person player character isn't presented, it is experienced. It's not empathy that we wish to promote in the player character, but immersive agency. No film script ever had to concern itself with such a task.

Spot on.

[Morgoth]

Nice read.

 

But I can only imagine that good old fashioned CRPG fanboys with PnP roots may disagree with that article (you know, more lines = more depth).

[Azarkon]

To be fair, his assessment was focused on one aspect (point of view), and almost all of his examples were taken from shooters and adventure games. The writer, to be frank, does not even try to integrate the storytelling successes of third person games like the FF's and the Infinity Engine games.

 

Oblivion is a solid example of what he was talking about: the agency of the player, particularly if you never switch out of first person mode, is never violated. Yet does that make Oblivion a masterpiece of RPG storytelling? Eh...