Greetings!
Have you ever sat down at your console or PC, and played a video game that just captured your attention with its characters and journey? If you have, you’ve fallen for one of the most important elements of art: storytelling. For this tutorial, we’re going to explore storytelling in video games and see just how you can include captivating stories in your games!
Disclaimer: This is not about story games specifically; it's about telling stories in all genres of games, from first-person shooters to tycoons.
What Makes a Story?
Stories, at their heart, are a communication of ideas. Within every single book, there is a central theme, or idea, that the author wants to communicate, and often that entails presenting more than one message at once. But how can this be applied to game development? For that, we are going to look at the essential parts of a story, and then explain each one in-depth with actual game examples before at the end, combining them to create the powerful tool of storytelling.
So, where do we begin?
Theme
I cannot stress this enough, so lets put it in bold: Every Story Must Have A Theme. What do I mean by that? Well, as I said before, stories are communications of ideas. If we want to explore story-telling in gaming, we need to establish what our theme is going to be. Everything we do in our game has to, in some way, shape, or form, be related directly back to the theme.
What are themes, though? They can be anything you want to present to the world. If you have an opinion or a thought about the world, or society, or anything relating to humanity, it can be a theme. Here are some ones I thought of whilst writing this tutorial.
When technology becomes our crutch, we lose our sense of humanity.
Love is a more powerful motivator than hate
Sometimes the only way to win the war is to lose the battle.
These are just ideas, basic general thoughts that can apply to any number of cases. But like I said, everything needs to relate to the theme directly. For this, we will take a look at the best story-telling(in my modest opinion) ever in video games: Halo Combat Evolved.
In Halo Combat Evolved, the theme can be(roughly) described as how just one soldier can make a huge difference, and that soldier is you, the player. The landscapes and settings you play in are massive, huge, and exotic, and make you feel small in comparison. But then you engage in combat, and you’re blowing these aliens into dust as you fight to protect Cortana. You alone are taking on massive covenant forces, and this makes you, the player, feel powerful. The fact that you are doing so much, that you are giant over your fellow marines, that you are murdering hundreds of aliens by yourself is what makes you feel so important and thus, making you the one who turns the tide in favor of humanity.
This leads to another important aspect of any story…
Characters
No story exists without characters. Characters are anyone(or anything) who reacts to what is happening in the plot of a story. For example, the ocean in Moana is as much of a character as Maui because of how it drives Moana and Maui forward on their quest.
For the sake of not making this a college class lecture, we’re going to focus on two main types of characters: static and dynamic ones. The difference between them is apparent in the name: static characters don’t change, whilst dynamic ones do. Going back to Moana, the Ocean is a static character, because it’s goals and personality never really change. It does not learn a lesson or become greater than it once was through the story. It’s just trying to restore balance in the islands. Maui, meanwhile, is dynamic; he goes from being an arrogant, self-pleasing egomaniac to someone with genuine concern and love for man.
How does this idea of static and dynamic characters translate to games? Well, a common model of characters in games is to have the main character act as the sole dynamic character in the story; this allows the player to feel more immersed in what is happening around them and allows the theme to be all the more impactful. Meanwhile, the other characters shall remain static so that the player feels like they are progressing with a supporting cast behind them, rather than the story leaving them behind in the dust. Halo remains a great example of this. Master Chief is the player in every way, and the static characters around him(Cortana, Sergeant Johnson, Captain Keyes, 343 Guilty Spark) simply provide the plot points for the player to continue through the story.
To summarize the above, having the player be dynamic in a story full of static characters is a great way to make the story feel relevant to the player
But we’re not done with characters quite yet. Remember what I was saying about the Ocean from Moana? Characters don’t have to be people who talk; they can be elements as well. You could create a story about a kite that gets caught in a tree but is rescued by a playful gust of wind, where the wind was both the villain and the hero of the story. You can make the wind such a character, and convey a message of how sometimes it only takes seeing the consequences of one’s actions to force a reversal. Use the environment to act as characters as well, and your story will become all the more immersive as a result.
Plot
So, this is the portion most people get stuck in. What about the plot? The details of how the story weaves into itself and ultimately makes its point without being too direct. After all, the best stories are those that leave it up to the reader to interpret what they find. I, personally, fail in this regard, and therefore cannot tell you exactly how to make a plot. All I can tell you is the single most important lesson I know from fiction writing:
Show, Don't Tell
This cliche is possibly the most important concept in all storytelling. If you just tell your audience that “the enemy is at the gates,” they may be interested in that development, but it isn’t immediate to them. If you show them on-screen that the enemy is literally climbing over the walls and charging you, then the player will feel directly in danger and react better to that plot detail. It’s all in the presentation. Exposition is a necessary curse, but it can be avoided through the use of visual or audio presentation. This actually reminds me of a second, equally important concept…
Chekovs Gun
If the author describes that there is a gun on the wall, that gun must go off in the next few chapters. Otherwise, there is no reason for the gun to be there, and thus, it should not be mentioned.
Essentially, this means that you should not include anything in a story that is not somehow relevant to the theme. This doesn’t really need explaining. If you don’t need it, don’t say it(or show it).
Putting It All Together
So, how do these parts all come together in a video game?
In most games, the theme is going to be the central point. Gameplay must tie back into whatever theme the developer is trying to push for it to work. Otherwise, the theme is going to go over the head of most players, and the story, lost. This is really helped with the characters. By making the player the dynamic central figure, the theme will feel like its being directly applied to them, making it more impactful. And the plot will help carry the player into a universe where that theme needs to be accepted and allow them to walk away with it from the fictional story they were into the real world they live in.
This is by no means exhaustive of story elements or methods to apply them in video games. This is meant to scratch the surface, and allow new developers to see that they don’t have to make a simulator to make some cash. Storys are just as important as repeatedly clicking the mouse button over and over again.
Happy Trails,
CaptLincoln
