Video games and narrative structure

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kneedeepinthedoomed

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So, how many video games can you remember that had the three act structure?

How many video games can you remember that used the first 10% of runtime for main character setup, like Michael Hauge suggests in his six stage plot structure concept?

I reckon even in a linear videogame, the typical runtime of more than 10 hours doesn't allow for the first ten percent being used to show us the main character in his natural, everyday habitat. Because that's over one hour! The expectation of most videogame players is to run and shoot stuff within five minutes, tops. That means, the player wants to be at least in what Hauge calls the "new situation" phase - after the teleporting device breaks, everything goes horribly wrong and the monsters start appearing! - after five minutes.

That's not even a noticeable percentage of most video games' plot time. They basically want the introduction out of the way and the monsters spawned, or whatever else the main gameplay mechanic is, almost instantly. There was a recent article at RockPaperShotgun demanding "Let us play!" in theatralic fashion, driving exactly at this - shut up, give me the shotgun.

Now I recognize Hauge's six stages are a reflection of Hollywood movies. These usually have a runtime of 90 to 120 minutes. But they're also based in the three-act structure, supposedly a common underpinning of all storytelling, so up to a degree the same should be true for videogames that tell stories, i.e. a lot of them. (It is also true for novels.)

So, how many video games can you remember that had major plot points at 25%, 50% and 75% of the runtime? How many games actually have the "major setback" plot point at 75%?

Very few. And here's why:

Because most videogame protagonists grow stronger over the game's course in a linear fashion. They level up, gain new skill points, find more powerful weapons. A game protagonist doesn't lose all that at the three-quarter mark. The gaming community collectively squeals if the designer takes away their weapons at some point in the game. The squeal will get louder if you take away skills or levels. At the same time, the more powerful the avatar gets, the less tension there is, because the game gets easier with the bigger guns, the super skills, the silver dragon scale armour.

What is 50% of the runtime anyway, in a video game? Imagine an open world game like GTA5 or the Witcher. It is impossible for the writer to know what quest the player is doing, at what point of the world the player is halfway through the game. The player may be picking daisies for 110 hours, for all we know. It's impossible in a truly open world game to predict this.

So between purely mechanical games and real open world games with linear skill progression, the three act structure falls flat on its face. A (mostly) linear game will do a better job at predicting where the halfway point is. But it will just vary massively.

I know I said that most video games are linear, because they have a beginning and an end. While that is the case, the writer cannot know how long the player will spend in between, and in what portion of the game. All we can do is guess.

So what do you make of this?
 

Bufty

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I surmise you want to discuss this with game creators/developers as opposed to gamers, but I can only respond as one of the latter.

As a 25-year gamer, I much prefer and enjoy going through a game at my own speed, linear or not. I love exploring every nook and cranny, picking everything up and picking side quests as I choose. But I also like to know the action is just around the corner. Others may prefer to leap in at the Nightmare level. I actually don't like constant action thrust down my throat, but some folks obviously do.

I guess all the game writer folks can do IS guess and hope they get it right.
 
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kneedeepinthedoomed

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Let me ask a question that pure gamers can answer: Can you name a game that had at least one major plot point around the entire mid portion of the game (something that meant a noticeable change to the main character)? What was that event?

The only example of a mid-game plot change I can remember was from Quake 4, the shooter game, where the protagonist / avatar gets turned into a cyborg by the alien Strogg. It didn't really have any major consequences though, except being able to walk through Strogg lasers. :-/

Think of the typical plot changes: Death of a mentor, loss of all hope, etc. Can you name games that do that kind of stuff in a meaningful way (i.e. it has to have a lasting effect on the protagonist)? If yes, what was your reaction to it?
 
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Sophia

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Think of the typical plot changes: Death of a mentor, loss of all hope, etc. Can you name games that do that kind of stuff in a meaningful way (i.e. it has to have a lasting effect on the protagonist)? If yes, what was your reaction to it?

I think Bioware RPGs have a lot of this familiar Hero's Journey structure to them. Dragon Age: Origins is an obvious example. I love it.
 

Dawnstorm

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Let me ask a question that pure gamers can answer: Can you name a game that had at least one major plot point around the entire mid portion of the game (something that meant a noticeable change to the main character)? What was that event?

Japanese role playing games do that a lot. The most notorious example is probably Final Fantasy 6, where at around half-way through the game you find that you tried to stop the wrong guy and a result the second half of the game takes place in the ruins of the world you knew. Lesser examples: Phantasy Star 2 (half-way around the game you solve the monster infestation, but lose an important party member AND are branded terrorists and henceforth hunted by robots), Tales of Symphonia (you find you the mission is a lie, but don't find out what the hell is actually going on until near the end - your actions will erase a major city from the world map among other things), Final Fantasy X (the moment the main character realises that he's the only one who didn't know what your party was really doing, to the game changer near the end of the game)... Too many to meniton, really.
 

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So, "noticeable change" is a stumbling block for me. Physical change is easy and common in games (addition of new powers/forms/etc) but they might not signify bigger changes beyond 'something has changed.'

Depending on how you are as a player, Delsin in InFamous: Second Son "noticeable changes" a bunch of times in the course of the game when he gains knew powers, etc. If you play with an investment in the story, the death of his brother can be a bigger change than any of those.

Similarly, in Heavy Rain, Ethan Mars changes more overtly when he chops his finger off, but revealing the true killer is more significant a shift to the player if you are invested in the plot. Joel getting hurt and Ellie taking over in The Last of Us also causes a significant shift in the narrative of the game...

I'd also second Dragon Age (and BioWare games) which I love, but does that count per your criteria if the irrevocable choices are multi-plot options? Deciding Mages or Templars will cause all sorts of important plot things to happen, but they are built into the game. I can choose Mages one playthrough, and Templars the next. (or to romance Cullen in DA:I or... well, always romance Cullen)

I love games with a more narrative focus (single or multiple plot option) so game-changing moments are my favorite. There are probably fifteen games where I can think of character shift moments (either in my mindset as a player or the literal plot of the game -- don't get me started on Horizon Zero Dawn), but I'm not sure how much this helps answer your question?
 

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I'm a bit confused by the framing of the question. First of all, the "Three Act Structure" is nothing close to the underpinning of all story telling. Not even in films or novels. It's a particularly prevalent model in the West, but it's not the be all end all.

And a lot of games do have the things your talking about, including the set up (generally combining the character introduction with the mechanical tutorial, see a lot of the Legend of Zelda games, Kingdom Hearts, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin's Creed, Owl Boy, etc.) Game narratives totally have major plot beats common in other forms of media, but they are framed differently because the audience's mode of engagement is completely different. The players is an active controller of and participant in events. Sure the story itself is scripted, but the audience "makes it happen" by shooting the dudes or solving puzzles or jumping on the platforms or whatever. the tricky part for writers is not knowing how long it will take to get from story beat A to story beat B. But that's a pacing issue, and to me eyes makes the "X% through the story" metric moot.

I also take issue with the the term "squealing." I find it dismissive, particularly since in a lot of cases games shouldn't take away player achievements. Because that is what they are. Gear, levels, abilities, etc. are things the player has taken a lot of time and effort to earn, so of course it can annoy people to have all that taken away. Not that is hasn't been done to great effect (Journey kind of does this in the ice level and it is grueling. Dragon Age:Origins isolates you from your party at one point. Lots of other games do take away gear if the protagonist is captured or seemingly incapacitated. but it has to be done carefully). And simply leveling up does not necessarily remove tension from the experience. play any Dark Souls game and tell me there's no tension once you get a certain sword or item.

There are also games that use the medium of gaming to brilliant effect when telling their stories. Bioshock is legendary in this regard. The Souls-like game stories can only be effectively told through a game since they rely so much on atmosphere and environment. The Sexy Brutale and Pyre just came out this year and are incredible narrative experiences. And you want set up? Play any of the Persona games since three. They have multiple hours of narrative set up before any meaningful gameplay happens. Players make do.

And finally, what the heck is a "pure gamer"?
 

Will Collins

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Yes, Bioware tend to do this the best, whilst also giving the player the choice to play around.
 

kneedeepinthedoomed

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"Pure gamers" as in, a distinction of people on this forum who are gamers vs being game writers.

I know lots of games have setups for the protagonist, but I was specifically referring to the six-phase plot structure which estimates that most feature films use the first 10% of the runtime for the setup. I don't think 99% of games do this. I merely find this interesting. Sure you can find examples to the contrary, but broadly speaking, games don't do this.

The mindset of the player changing is a good thing, but the player is always safe and sound in the chair behind the keyboard, so major changes like the loss of a finger don't ever apply to the player except passively, as an emotional reaction. Plot points happen to the protagonist, not the player, unless the protag is just a non-speaking extension of the player in the game world, in which case it's hard for the protag to meaningfully change anyway.

Yes, gear is something the player spends time to collect, although in a lot of games the guns are really just there for the taking and there's no effort involved in getting them. It's maybe different in games where you have to craft your gear or grind for it. I agree that "especially valuable gear" shouldn't be taken away, or restored at a later point if it is. Most players aren't willing to lose any gear or stats on the protagonist (or avatar), though, so that makes it hard to create a "major setback" for the protag in games, if not impossible. If the player doesn't accept the protag changing to the negative, or becoming temporarily weaker, because of a feeling of ownership, then meaningful setbacks are impossible to script.

So we agree that some role playing games (and RPG hybrids) do the plot point thing. Last of Us is a good example. Another example I recently remembered is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, where with the death of one brother, half the controller becomes useless and certain puzzles can no longer be solved in the same way. Of course this also affects the player emotionally. I really liked this, it was very clever.

Bioshock, I really don't see how Bioshock uses gameplay for storytelling. Most of it is a bog-standard mechanics-first shooter (and not even a very good one) with some story grafted on, which is largely told through a ton of audio files the player can collect. However, later in the game, the antagonist messes with the protag's plasmids (spells, roughly), which is based in the story, so this is indeed an example of plot points affecting the protagonist in a major way. Of course, protag wears a Big Daddy suit in the end, but that is more of a surface change and happens really late in the "story arc". Don't get me wrong, I like Bioshock, but its appeal is really more in the underwater city setting than anything else. I wouldn't say the story is bad, but I also don't think it's conveyed in an especially clever way.

Souls may be an exception to the "tension goes down as player becomes invincible" thing, but it happens in a lot of other games.

Getting to choose a branch of the storyline over another, for example siding with a faction, could be seen as a plot point, but does it really change the state or abilities of the protag for a noticeable duration? If it doesn't, or if the changes are very minor (shiny new sword, special faction quest...) then it seems more like a mechanical (gameplay) decision node than a major plot point.

Thanks for the various examples given, I really want to look into them now.
 

sunandshadow

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Here's how I think about writing game scripts: A game's linearity isn't primarily about plot progression, it's about gameplay progression. But gameplay progression is loosely related to plot progression because usually gameplay progression is directly connected to theme.

If the game is an RPG where the main gameplay progression is leveling up, the main character will usually start in a position where they are an inexperienced teenager or amnesiac adult who doesn't have the power or resources to defend themselves or their home and loved ones. This lack of power and resources forces them to travel, and physical locations take the place of act structure; generally each location is an act, and the structure has several smaller acts. (There are existing act structure theories which have 7 or 12 acts rather than the original 3 or 4.) The middle acts will usually explore different angles of the main character's initial problem, and how they are altered by new skills the main character has gained or new information that has been discovered through exploring and talking to NPCs. The climax will of course require the main character to defeat the most powerful opponent in the world and sometimes also the main character must personally correct some problem with the world, restoring everything to some kind of domestic normality.

Open-world RPGs are different; something like Skyrim does use locations as story units, but then it adds an optional main quest over top of that, and also those radiant quests which function as breadcrumbs encouraging the player to travel from one place to another.

Adventure games, on the other hand, follow more of a mystery structure. Observation, Conjecture, Experimentation, etc. are used to unravel obstacles and gain access to more information and more territory. Some adventure games have strictly isolated physical levels for the ease of controlling item interactivity, but other adventure games ahd one chunk of territory at a time to a starting or core area. The recent trend has been for adventure games to cumulate in one critical choice, which will either be about ethics or about rationalization vs. unpleasant truths. This choice is parallel to accusing a criminal at the climax of an investigation - you have to both figure out who has done what, and decide if naming the person as a criminal is really the right thing to do. The player is expected to make both choices, experiencing both endings.

Many other games have less story. Mission-based games have each mission equal to a scene at most; the whole game may be only equivalent to a short story, with only a single straightforward main problem which is solved by working hard, working efficiently/cleverly, or refining oneself for maximum speed/effectiveness. Some of these games only have dialogue or narration for the beginning and ending, with none in the middle, excluding item flavor texts and mission objectives.
 
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PyriteFool

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Spoilers for Bioshock...I'm referring to the "Would you kindly" reveal. I think that twist is vastly more effective because, as the player, you have been actively doing what you were told. That twist wouldn't work in a novel or film.


The mindset of the player changing is a good thing, but the player is always safe and sound in the chair behind the keyboard, so major changes like the loss of a finger don't ever apply to the player except passively, as an emotional reaction. Plot points happen to the protagonist, not the player, unless the protag is just a non-speaking extension of the player in the game world, in which case it's hard for the protag to meaningfully change anyway.

This point confuses me. Games aren't unique in this regard. Obviously watching a film or reading a book in which someone loses a hand is unpleasant, but it's not actually happening. If anything, in a game there is less distance because you can use first person perspective or make the player more active in events. And that's not even touching on VR. Seriously, have you watched or played Resident Evil 7? That crap is intense! I will never do that game in VR. Too icky, and I am a horror devotee. First person perspective getting your hand hacked off with a chainsaw is bad enough when I'm just sitting on my couch.

I suppose, for me personally, I react very negatively to the suggestion that games are a lesser narrative medium (which may not be your intention, OP, but I am getting some of that from the language). Sure, a lot of games don't have a huge narrative emphasis, instead choosing to focus on gameplay. But the same can be said of action romp films or erotic novels. It does not then follow that these genres are incapable of telling great stories. Obviously games follow different narrative rules and pacing even within the gaming sphere. A platformer can't tell a story in the same way as a first person shooter or an adventure game or an RPG or a 4X game. That's a good thing. It makes the landscape more diverse and expands the range of stories that can be told.

Games can also create emergent story telling, which doesn't follow any structure. X-com is a great example. Sure, there are the plot missions, but every person I know that has played X-com has their own stories of their specific soldiers doing crazy things or dying in hilarious/frustrating/tragic ways. Myself included (the sad tale of mama sniper, may she rest in peace). I'm also seriously unconvinced that the Hauge guidelines are the actual norm for any medium of storytelling outside may blockbuster films. I'm sure some people find them useful, but at best they descriptive of trends and not a measure of quality. Again, the three act structure is pretty arbitrary and no where near universal.

With all that, I do not envy the task game writers have. I can only imagine how hard it is to juggle writing, mechanical storytelling, player engagement, pacing etc. There are so many variables I'd imagine are difficult to control for, and a lot of that control will come from the programmers and designers rather than the writer. And then realizing in a lot of genres, half your work won't even be seen! I'd love to hear more about how this process goes down.
 

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Okay, since physical changes that have an emotional impact don't count...

The shift between Jodie and Aiden in Beyond: Two Souls create an entirely different game mechanic.

I do think it's strange to think that losing gear isn't something that happens with any weight in games. HZD uses it to great effect late in the game, and I consider it a pretty standard trope. (particularly in a dark-moment scenario... "captured and have to escape without all the tools you've grown accustomed to" or the like)

Are we just naming examples of things that happen here? I think the idea of making a concrete line between gameplay decisions and plot decisions is limiting something particularly special about the storytelling opportunities in the medium. At some point, the criteria of the discussion becomes a game of hopscotch - plot-driven, long-lasting character change that impacts the game mechanics. Why those criteria?
 

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I kind of feel like this thread is basically a complaint about "THIS is how a story is supposed to be and video games don't follow it!"

Let's be honest, it's great when a fun game has an intricate, exciting story which compliments the mechanics, and those are usually the games that stand the test of time, but generally speaking, story is secondary to the mechanics of a video game. Many people blow through games without caring what the story actually is or the depth of it. They're happy just to understand the basic reason you're doing the things you're doing. Most players don't care, or even notice if a video game has a proper three act structure or if the character you're playing has an actual arc they go through during the game. Heck, look at the Five Nights at Freddy's games. Players are equally happy to come up with their own theories about what's going on if you don't give them a story straight out.

Of course, as a video game writer, it doesn't seem fair that you still have to take all that character and plot information into account in order to ensure that the bits of story the player does get makes sense and follow continuity. That's part of the price of such a job though.
 
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kneedeepinthedoomed

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A lot of misunderstandings. Perhaps this results from the fact that I'm not a native English speaker and from a different culture. Or from the probing, unsharp nature of my OP.

I am neither complaining nor dragging down games as a storytelling medium. Nor intentionally insulting anyone. I'm merely wondering, at the core, how we can use more traditional ideas of plot progression and adapt them to games, or make them useful to us. Or if that makes any sense at all. This is a large question, and the OP was necessarily unsharp because of it.

Thanks for your varied and interesting points of view.

The idea that locations in games are a major structural element rings true. In my own game, the story and then the plot developed from the succession of locations, aka levels. Since it is a story driven game, though, there exists a layer of character arcs above the succession of levels, the protag's arc being largely identical with the main plot. That is definitely something you can do in videogames, and I'm wondering (again in a kind pf philosophical, brainstorming way) what ways there are for doing that and in how far classic models of plot can be helpful. And IF they can be helpful (I think they can), how do they need to be transmogrified to better fit the medium of videogames.

That is my aim with this thread. It is a very wide open question.

Is leveling up really the main gameplay progression in RPGs? Isn't there usually at least two more layers to it, as in, make your way to the mystical realm of "Someplace" and overcome the Big Bad, possibly helping to undo his machinations? I believe levelling up is character development.

Maybe we can go with this idea of layers as a useful tool in videogame writing. Like in Photoshop layers.

- World (and environmental storytelling, as in, environment art and level design)
- Mechanics (and improving player skills over time, mechanical freedom and challenge)
- Character development (levelling up, kitting out, curve of player power)
- Progression of levels / locations, difficulty curve of enemy encounters and boss fights
- Plot and subplot (main character's story arc, perhaps a few impact characters)
- Background information (audio logs, item descriptions, lore etc)
- Dynamic story or "Microstory" as in, I went there and blew myself up accidentally, I did this and that quest, I romanced X character etc)

And the list could probably go on.

Food for thought.
 

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Just re this particular bit:

Is leveling up really the main gameplay progression in RPGs? Isn't there usually at least two more layers to it, as in, make your way to the mystical realm of "Someplace" and overcome the Big Bad, possibly helping to undo his machinations? I believe levelling up is character development.

I think level progression is (generally) a game reward system. So I grind a lot, or I beat a really big fight (challenge), and I'm rewarded with new stats, new equipment, and thus new abilities. A lot of that is probably traditional and drawn from tabletop and text-driven RPGs where the stats are very much the core reward, along with the advancement of the story--kind of like serialization, that: want to know what happens to Little Nell? Buy next week's edition! Same effect with comic books, of course.

What often happens, in theory anyway, is you have multiple reward arcs operating simultaneously partly because you have different player types (c.f. Bartle) but also because, especially in large RPGs, you want different kinds of interactions. If all I'm doing is grinding for XP, I'll get bored. The solution isn't to remove the grinding and just give me the Sword of Legendary Death--that's boring, too, because it's too easy. So make me grind, but give me some other reward along the way, maybe for some other challenge, maybe not. This is how/why you get random loot drops and various kill count combos and such--most players can handle a fair number of concurrent goals and it makes the game feel deeper even if it, as in the case of many RPGs, isn't any deeper mechanically.

Character development, in terms of characterization, is going to depend a lot, I'd think, on how immersed the player is in the character's identity, or vice-versa. Which itself varies according to aesthetics, situations, and so on. When we play some multiplayer shooter, do we say "I died" or "[Character] died"? I'd guess, for me, I do the latter more with really heavily story-driven games, particularly those with large casts. On a platformer, I'd probably blame myself for the death. I'd guess some of it is a level of immediacy, too. The big story-RPGs are often pretty abstracted. Your camera often operates from a distance. The dialogue is mostly scripted. It's almost like using omniscient POV in a book. Contrast a Mass Effect where I'm very much in Shepard's POV the whole time, down to deciding what I'm going to say. In those games, I feel more like Shepard, even though I do have a character with a (mostly) pre-determined background whose worldview develops substantially throughout the game. The choice mechanics, though, then give me some agency in determining how my Shepard reacts to given situations, but my dynamic agency is constrained, even then.

The biggest takeaway, for me, thinking about this is just that it's a balance. It's very easy with any sort of writing to make it all technical, all theoretical. But this is art. A huge amount of it is feel. How much agency can I give or take before a BioWare choice system is going to feel forced? Look at how different they've been, and how different players react. It's hugely situational.

Playtest often. Follow your gut the rest of the time.
 

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I think video game narrative structure and are very different as the OP suggested. You aren't going to come across video games that follow a traditional narrative structure. For example Dark Souls. Dark Souls doesn't really have any storytelling other than reading the items. The story is up to you. Horror games and Horror novels are also apple and oranges. In horror games all the tension comes from ambience, jump scares and game design, but in horror novels the emphasis is on the character, not the reader. There is basically a psychological aspect of passivity. In one you are an active participant, in the other you are not. I know that is kind of off topic a little since we're talking about plot, but I'll add this: I would be very mad if my flamethrower was taken from me in Alien Isolation.
 
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