I’ve come
to notice that around the end of each semester, lots of people like to review
their semester; much like a food critic would review a restaurant and their
food. These people usually have had excellent experiences in that semester;
maybe they obtained a new girlfriend/boyfriend, maybe they made all As, maybe
they accomplished something with an extra-curricular club they’re apart of, or
maybe they learned how to not suck at school! All of these are valid reasons to
celebrate, and they all make for a very tasty semester. Just sprinkle some garlic
and oregano, leave to simmer for a few minutes, and you have a semester that’s
ready for the menu that ANY food critic would be lucky to taste!
I, however,
had a relatively lackluster semester, and will therefore be talking about video
games! Again. Sorry.
Over the
past year or so, I’ve started to notice a shift in my interests. If someone
were to ask me what I was interested in around the time I graduated high
school, I would’ve probably said drumming, music, video games, and drum corps.
Nowadays, the interest in video games has gotten much stronger, and the
interest in drum corps has decreased. I can’t say that I’m pleased with that,
but if I’m being honest with myself, that’s where it all is. I could blame any
number of factors, but in reality, we feed our interests through our daily
actions, and this semester I didn’t do much except homework, studying, and
video games. Kinda lame, I know.
However as
a result of this shift, I noticed something about my video game choices that’s
made me notice something about myself, and something about the state of video
gaming today in general: I appreciate a good story over most other things. My
favorite games at the moment include games such as Bioshock, Bioshock:
Infinite, The Walking Dead, and Silent Hill 2. However when I say my favorite
games, I don’t really mean games that I play every day, but instead I mean
games that I find myself thinking about often, because they have extremely
interesting stories.
Bioshock
contains lots of themes of objectivism, elitism, whether we control our own
fate or not, and even some conniving commentary about video games themselves. Bioshock:
Infinite deals with themes of cognitive dissonance, denial, extreme guilt, and
racism. The Walking Dead and Silent hill 2 are both heart-breaking stories
about loss, grief, and in the case of Silent Hill 2, the question of whether
one is really capable of lying to themselves or not.
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| It's also got this nice gentleman. |
All of
these games contain some amazing moments that really stick in my mind even
after I’ve seen them, and yet none of them really relate to the gameplay
(except for some instances in The Walking Dead). Why? If the memorable parts of
a game to me don’t involve gameplay itself, why even play a game? I might as
well watch a movie or read a book, right?
Well, the
cool thing about video games is that if they’re good at immersion, then the
experience can be greater than that of a movie or a book sometimes. This is
especially true in the case of The Walking Dead, where you yourself are making
all the choices within the game, and therefore feel like you have a stake in
all of the madness as well. If you let yourself, you were able to feel like you
were Lee, and you were fully responsible for taking care of Clementine, who is
easily one of the most likeable characters ever created in any video game.
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| She could've turned Hitler into father of the year. |
Therefore,
good video game writing (in my opinion) hinges on a few things. The biggest, is
the availability of player-made decisions. This is one of the major things that
video games can do which movies and books cannot, and needs to be used more
often (though in a way that matters and which impacts the story or the
characters, unlike with the Mass Effect series). Two, is creating
well-designed, effective characters. Too many games I’ve played have had an
abundance of highly forgettable characters, walking stereotypes, and
one-dimensional personalities. The cocky soldier, the maiden who despises
violence, the weird kid who day dreams all the time (looking at you, Zelda games),
and the generic asshole; these are some of the most common characters I’ve come
across in the games I’ve played, and holy shit are they boring. They might as
well be cardboard cutouts! The games I previously mentioned do characters
right, in addition to The Witcher series, the Mass Effect series, and Red Dead
Redemption, among others I’m probably forgetting.
The last
thing writers can do to make a video game’s story worth caring about is just
that: write a story that will intrigue people. I love pokemon to death, but
save for the last 2 games, the stories might as well be non-existent. I really couldn’t care less about the story
in pokemon games, and what I loved about the most recent games is that they
actually made an effort to produce a story that was interesting. In too many
games, the story is an after-thought, which is sad to me. My fondest memories
of video games that I’ve enjoyed have mostly all been plot-based, so it’s hard
for me to get attached to a game whose writers obviously didn’t try very hard.
Write better stories people! The effort will show, and your game will be better
remembered for it.
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| Don't get me started on this game, because I will never stop. |
Now, all of this isn’t to say that game
developers should throw gameplay out of the window in favor of plot, far from
it actually. Essentially, I just want more well-rounded games. Is it such a bad
thing to want games that are fun to play AND have characters that I care about?
Maybe a plot twist or some lore? No, it’s not. It’s not too much to ask for. So
do it guys.
