play me a story...
So, over the last few years, i've moved steadily from 'casual' gamer to largely focused on video games as entertainment in my life. I rewarded myself after a promotion with a big tv and xbox back in 2001...halo drove that...but now i have all three current gen consoles, a media cave and library of games promising everything from 8-bit bleeps and bloops to esoteric medlies on choice and fate. You can race cars, shoot aliens, golf, wonder at the antics of virtual microbes... on and on it goes.
Games, at essence are about 'what if' - you set up a set of rules, add in humans and see what happens. It has long been so - from card games and chess to basketball and flip-cup - maybe even beer pong. You simply don't know when you add in the human element. To me, early video games were really more like training sims - go here, fight that, shoot these, bleep bloop - electronic trills rewarding the finishing of a level. who is better? Faster? who sees teh pattern, who doesn't? Arthur Geis of Team Xbox often talks about 'rain man moments' when you find that shooter, puzzler or sports game where you just boot the game an dominate - this can be incredibly satisfying. Even if you know that the master chief will save the earth, that mario will rescue the princess, figuring out how to get to that end can be thrilling - admittedly, you're walking a path mapped out for you and it's fairly linear, it is FUN. Unless you suck. Which, for most of my youth, i think i did - i never had a pocket full of quarters for the arcade, so atari 2600 and me were friends, with frustration as a theme - 'cause i often wondered "why are the space people invading?" Where did the ghosts come from in pac-man?
On the other side from the sims were text based adventure games, playing out like line driven choose-your-own-adventure games - with branches and plots and endings. these grew into RPGs - complex D&D like sims that i all but ignored - wisely perhaps i figured grad school, experiments and my ocd nature wouldn't gel. Sommewhere along the line, in the last few years (for me at least) the elements converged something really interesting happened - I feel less like i'm running a maze and more like i'm playing a story.
Risable as it might be, and plainly derivative at root, I loved Halo, liked Halo2, and alternately loved and hated halo3 - but the endings were never in doubt. The stories were interesting, the characters entertaining. But we never interacted. Then along came Commander Sheppard and his big shiny spaceship, The Normandy. Mass Effect, with its branching dialog trees, characters whose behavior changed based on choices you made, and a character creator which gave you different approaches ot combat - all mixed in to hook me totally. None of that was that new - Bioware and Bethesda and many others have been making RPGs for years - but somehow the space opera RPG was just enough to get me and keep me.
As I played out Halo 3: ODST, I wanted to talk to my team - I wanted to ask questions. I loved the story, and tread and retread the demolished streets of New Mombassa to find all the audiologs - honestly, the story of Sadie, her father and Vergil was more compelling to me than Mal and the crew of Serenity - I mean, the other ODST troopers...
Lara Croft had great adventrues, but all that figuring out seemed to have so little to do with anything...
Then along came Dragon Age - by happenstance, i put it on my wish list for xmas, and Bug got it for me - a substitute until Mass Effect 2 came out. Also by BioWare, Dragon Age: Origins blew me away - while inferior in graphical presentation (on Xbox360) - the game has the broades foundation of any i've played - a fully fleshed fictional world with myth and history (yes, yes, it is filled with fantasty tropes, but they are GOOD tropes) - and more dialog that seems possible. The characters have personality, attitude (which changes) - they banter with each other - so much so that I found myself stopping and listening to them fuss over misplaced socks and jibes about noses and odd conversations about licking lamp posts. I've been admonished by a non-player character that my gay romance is distracting from my purpose - not because it's gay, but because I've got to save the world.
when at last Mass Effect 2 arrived - I was struck by a number of things - which both simplified and diversified the game - choices perpetuate - meaning they carry forward - people you saved/killed, things you did (good and bad) are here - and in small ways, impact the story. I expect that to continue into Mass Effect 3, indeed three big choices made in the end hours of the game may have large effects (sic) on the plot. This isn't new at all - you could kill off major characters - even entire communities in games like Fallout 3.
Suffice to say, I think as Bioware through the reimagined Mass Effect, reshapes the possibilities of RPGs, as Dragon Age changes the way you might interact with non player characters - there are amazing opportunites to tell stories - stories with dynamic tension between 'following a plot' and making choices .
It is all, you know, a conceit - because all these worlds and stories are made by people for people - little of the vast randomness of life is present in games - a comfort because a game as complex and changeable as life might not be as fun - but what if?
Games, at essence are about 'what if' - you set up a set of rules, add in humans and see what happens. It has long been so - from card games and chess to basketball and flip-cup - maybe even beer pong. You simply don't know when you add in the human element. To me, early video games were really more like training sims - go here, fight that, shoot these, bleep bloop - electronic trills rewarding the finishing of a level. who is better? Faster? who sees teh pattern, who doesn't? Arthur Geis of Team Xbox often talks about 'rain man moments' when you find that shooter, puzzler or sports game where you just boot the game an dominate - this can be incredibly satisfying. Even if you know that the master chief will save the earth, that mario will rescue the princess, figuring out how to get to that end can be thrilling - admittedly, you're walking a path mapped out for you and it's fairly linear, it is FUN. Unless you suck. Which, for most of my youth, i think i did - i never had a pocket full of quarters for the arcade, so atari 2600 and me were friends, with frustration as a theme - 'cause i often wondered "why are the space people invading?" Where did the ghosts come from in pac-man?
On the other side from the sims were text based adventure games, playing out like line driven choose-your-own-adventure games - with branches and plots and endings. these grew into RPGs - complex D&D like sims that i all but ignored - wisely perhaps i figured grad school, experiments and my ocd nature wouldn't gel. Sommewhere along the line, in the last few years (for me at least) the elements converged something really interesting happened - I feel less like i'm running a maze and more like i'm playing a story.
Risable as it might be, and plainly derivative at root, I loved Halo, liked Halo2, and alternately loved and hated halo3 - but the endings were never in doubt. The stories were interesting, the characters entertaining. But we never interacted. Then along came Commander Sheppard and his big shiny spaceship, The Normandy. Mass Effect, with its branching dialog trees, characters whose behavior changed based on choices you made, and a character creator which gave you different approaches ot combat - all mixed in to hook me totally. None of that was that new - Bioware and Bethesda and many others have been making RPGs for years - but somehow the space opera RPG was just enough to get me and keep me.
As I played out Halo 3: ODST, I wanted to talk to my team - I wanted to ask questions. I loved the story, and tread and retread the demolished streets of New Mombassa to find all the audiologs - honestly, the story of Sadie, her father and Vergil was more compelling to me than Mal and the crew of Serenity - I mean, the other ODST troopers...
Lara Croft had great adventrues, but all that figuring out seemed to have so little to do with anything...
Then along came Dragon Age - by happenstance, i put it on my wish list for xmas, and Bug got it for me - a substitute until Mass Effect 2 came out. Also by BioWare, Dragon Age: Origins blew me away - while inferior in graphical presentation (on Xbox360) - the game has the broades foundation of any i've played - a fully fleshed fictional world with myth and history (yes, yes, it is filled with fantasty tropes, but they are GOOD tropes) - and more dialog that seems possible. The characters have personality, attitude (which changes) - they banter with each other - so much so that I found myself stopping and listening to them fuss over misplaced socks and jibes about noses and odd conversations about licking lamp posts. I've been admonished by a non-player character that my gay romance is distracting from my purpose - not because it's gay, but because I've got to save the world.
when at last Mass Effect 2 arrived - I was struck by a number of things - which both simplified and diversified the game - choices perpetuate - meaning they carry forward - people you saved/killed, things you did (good and bad) are here - and in small ways, impact the story. I expect that to continue into Mass Effect 3, indeed three big choices made in the end hours of the game may have large effects (sic) on the plot. This isn't new at all - you could kill off major characters - even entire communities in games like Fallout 3.
Suffice to say, I think as Bioware through the reimagined Mass Effect, reshapes the possibilities of RPGs, as Dragon Age changes the way you might interact with non player characters - there are amazing opportunites to tell stories - stories with dynamic tension between 'following a plot' and making choices .
It is all, you know, a conceit - because all these worlds and stories are made by people for people - little of the vast randomness of life is present in games - a comfort because a game as complex and changeable as life might not be as fun - but what if?