Overview of my posts on interactive storytelling
Here's an overview of all the posts I've written on interactive storytelling, to help organize my thoughts on it.
My idea for a form of interactive storytelling involves using interaction to help put the player in the character's shoes. Imagine being able to understand a different culture by 'living it'.
Some thoughts on how this could be done. 1st person or 3rd person over-the-shoulder point of view. QTE-like interactions for immersion rather than challenge. To initiate elements of an activity, to shift where the character's looking at or focusing on. Potentially text labels on the QTE targets, indicating what the action the player will do, to help them understand what the character's about to do.
Accurate 1st person visuals would be confusing - the interaction could make it more comprehensible. Lots of 'day in the life' details would be tedious in a non-interactive format. Interactivity could make it more engaging.
Potentially narration from the character, about what they're doing and thinking.
Possibly engage the player by having them predict or anticipate what the character's going to do, and in some small way reward them for correctly doing so.
Fictional realism (Jan 2024)
Related to the previous post, I think interactivity could be useful for presenting 'fictional realism' - fiction that is trying to accurately portray real details (like a real time and place). It may have a strong plot, or it may sacrifice that to some extent in order to provide more 'slice of life' details. Interaction to increase immersion. To put the player in the character's shoes. To let the player experience what it's like to be that character. So to go beyond 'show, don't tell' to 'experience, don't show or tell'.
"Strong" vs "loose" narratives (Aug 2022)
Defining some concepts that are useful for talking about interactive storytelling. There's a spectrum between strong and loose narratives. In a strong narrative, everything that happens is there to contribute to the overall details of the story (like its dramatic arc, and themes). A coherent whole. Events build on what came earlier. Details that don't contribute to the overall story are cut. Loose narrative details don't contribute much to a clear overall story. Real life is a loose narrative. I argue that strong narratives generally mean better storytelling.
Choice & narratives, and separating narratives from interaction (Aug 2022)
Interactivity in story-focused games is often used to provide the player with choices. The game may provide tens or hundreds of potential (interrelated) stories, with the player's choices determining which one they experience. It's difficult to construct that many different strong narratives. And pretty much impossible to do so if they're overlapping, as strong narratives don't "live close together" in "narrative space".
In a loose narrative, the moment-to-moment storytelling may look like what could appear in a non-interactive work with strong storytelling (like a novel or movie). But a strong narrative is about how all the moment to moment contribute to the overall story, so it's easy to overlook the lack of a strong narrative. It concerns larger-scale story details.
Choices give the player some agency. There can bea puzzle-like element to choose well to get better outcomes. The overall "interactive storytelling" package is narrative plus choices. It's easy to assume if the overall package is great, the storytelling must be great. But interactivity (gameplay) is separate from narrative. The choices determine what happens, and thus what specific narrative the player experiences. The narrative is the result of the interactions, which aren't part of it.
Many games alternate between interactive gameplay segments with loose narratives, and non-interactive (or with limited interaction) cutscenes with strong narratives. How the gameplay affects the storytelling. The gameplay puts large gaps between each bit of strong storytelling, effectively diluting the storytelling. The gameplay segments also constrain the types of narratives that can work in the story-focused segments. The overall plot has to be compatible with being repeatedly put on hold, for long periods of time, during the gameplay segments. And the plot has to be compatible with what the player character undertakes during the gameplay segments. In such games, the gameplay's the main focus, and the storytelling is used to enhance the overall experience. Not where the storytelling's the main focus, and the gameplay enhances the overall experience.
At each moment in a movie, there are the "performance details" (the acting performances, involving their posture, body language, movements, facial expressions). These reflect the characters' personality, intentions, and mental state. These are abstracted away in games when the player has control over a character. The player couldn't have control over them. The player can say what action to do (e.g. 'walk forwards') but can't control the acting performance details of the action. So the posture and movement animations (like for walking) tend to be always exactly the same. Abstracted and generic. This makes it difficult to have strong storytelling while the player has such control.
Audio and audiovisual logs (Aug 2022)
What they are and how they work. "Audiovisual logs", like found in "Everyone's Gone To The Rapture" and "Tacoma", are where the player sees a past scene unfolding, as if it was presently happening in the location the player is at. The role of these two kinds of logs in gameplay and storytelling.
Action-mirroring control schemes (Jan 2024)
Action-mirroring control schemes are found in several story-focused games. To increase immersion, the input approximates something of the nature of the action to be performed. E.g. a window that can be slid to the left to open may be opened by pushing left on the joystick. Or a cup of coffee may be stirred by making a circling motion with the joystick. Or mashing a button to try to escape the grasp of a bad guy. This post explores all the different kinds of such control schemes, and considers how successful they are increasing immersion. We argue they don't provide much immersion, and the immersion they do provide is for doing pretty basic tasks, so aren't very meaningful. They don't feel like doing the actual task. When we do these basic tasks in reality we tend to do them on autopilot (without thinking about how we're doing it).
We want a control scheme that more closely matches how we perceive and undertake actions. I argue that the one used in Beyond: Two Souls is more effective in this regard.
Activity-and-Choice Story-Games (Jan 2024)
A newer genre of story focused games that evolved out of point-and-click adventure games. Comparing the storytelling in these two types of games. In these games the puzzles are replaced by activities and choices.
Having a puzzle-focus restricts the storytelling. It has to be a story in which the main character solves puzzles. In which the plot can only be progressed by solving puzzles, which slows pacing. The gameplay is more part of solving the open puzzles rather than part of a particular story beat. Interactions with (and looking at) objects and other characters are primarily in service of the player solving puzzles.
Activities - character has a task or goal. A specific narrative situation. Player interacts with objects to complete it. Usually there's minimal challenge. It's there to provide some interaction that progresses the story. E.g. getting all the items from home to bring to a party (eg snacks, drinks, a blanket, money). Choices - explicit choices of what to do or say. Choice may need to be made within a time limit. These enable interactions with (and looking at) objects and other characters to be story-focused.
Cutscenes with interactivity (Jan 2024)
The kinds of cutscenes in video games, and how interactivity in them affects the strength of their storytelling. The benchmark is 'visual-action storytelling'. There's the basic non-interactive cutscenes. QTE-and-choice cutscenes introduce basic interactivity. During-Gameplay Cutscenes enable more player control, at the expense of weaker storytelling.
Environment and storytelling (Jan 2024)
The ways a video game's environment can contribute to the storytelling in the game, and how effectively each of these contribute to the storytelling. Also, why environmental storytelling (e.g. letters and audio logs) contributing to backstory is more heavily used in games. And why games aren't suited to the strongest form of visual storytelling, 'visual action'. And some ways of using environmental storytelling that haven't been exploited.
Behavior-psychology congruence (Jan 2024)
Behavior-psychology congruence is important for storytelling. A character's "psychology" is their character and mental state. Their behavior should be congruent with their psychology -- it should reflect their psychology (as well as their circumstances). Control over a character, in a game, can lead to a lack of such congruence. The character's behavior will tend to reflect, to some extent, the player's psychology.
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