Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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Bullus
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Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Bullus »

Sorry my first post is going to be a bit of a long one.

Having listened to a number of the Podcasts recently I was delighted to hear some in depth discussion not just of the games in question but also some issues facing the studios when they set about to make any game that could be tagged as open world. Can an open world game feature a truly inspirational narrative without out facet drawing you away and detracting from the other? I am a big fan of story rich games and yet I love the sense of adventure and exploration that an open world game can offer me. How best can we tie these two rich elements together or are they really polar opposites and never the twain shall meet?

Is it an inherent flaw in open world games that can’t be fixed? Is it technical? I’d love to get some insight on this from others and perhaps even a PODCAST to discuss this issue in general rather than just in regards to the games I will use to illustrate this.

I’m no longer a young man and responsibilities of life limit my ability to sink myself into video games like I once was able to do. That said, I recently upgraded my system and finally got to play a game that I had been hankering to play since I finished its predecessor in the series so many years ago. I’m speaking of the Witcher 3. To say I loved it would probably not fully explain the depth of how much enjoyment I took out of playing the game and how deeply I delved into the world on offer. For the first time in so very long, I disappeared from view of the other members of my household for hours at a time, fully engrossed in the game at hand. Once I sat down to play, none of my usual distractions from daily life even scratched the surface of the armour the game surrounded me with. Football games, Twitter, reading, movies, TV series all were swept aside.

But there was still something that didn’t quite make sense. I loved the story and its many criss crossing paths. My avatar sprinted from section to section to see as much as I could as quickly as I could. Be it secondary or main quests, or Witcher Contracts or Scavenger hunts I attacked it at full speed. I also loved the open world nature of it, popping away from the well trodden paths to take a look at areas that the story did not ask me to visit was a joy. The graphics and the design of the world made me want to explore and adventure in a way I once associated with the Legend of Zelda (I’m talking about my original foray into the NES game back in the 1980s when I was but a youth).

But these two facets don’t really work hand in hand. Geralt’s story should be urgent. He’s searching for at first his long lost (perhaps former?) lover and then once she is located he is sent to look for what is best described as his adopted daughter Ciri. He shouldn’t have time to pop over the hill to see what is there. Want to go on a Scavenger Hunt? Sorry, got a bit on at the moment, need to rescue my daughter from the evils of this and indeed other worlds. Could this conflict have been resolved with a slight tweek to either the story or presenting a reason for Geralt to take on so many time consuming endeavours when by all accounts his focus should be squarely on the main narrative presented?

My own thinking on this has me falling into the camp of a small tweek might have gone a fair way to fixing it in the case of the Witcher 3, though not necessarily other games that may suffer a similar issue. If you add a need for Geralt to earn money to achieve his main goal, his only option is to fall back on his trade. This very trade would encourage and legitimise the need to take on the contracts already present in the game. The amount of gold required would not make it necessary to take on all contracts, but to get from Valen to Novigrad a certain amount of Witchering would be compulsory. Which quests and parts of the map delved into would entirely be the choice of the player. Put in a similar requirement for money to get from Novigrad to Skellige and then again to get back and hey presto I feel the disconnect with the main story and exploration while not totally eliminated would be reduced by a healthy percentage. But does such a change in the system limit the open world nature of the game as it exists to it's detriment?

After finishing this game and feeling the need to tuck into another I began my journey into Skyrim. I’d heard so many good things about this game and while it is no longer a new game the graphics are still pleasing and the world indeed vast and at times enticing. I believe this game suffers even more from the issues described above though many would say that the ability to craft your own story is one of the games great strengths. I’d have liked a stronger main story, one that made exploring the expansive and varied environment at the expense of the story more of a decision. As it stands, to my mind the game doesn’t do enough to present a reason to move the main story along. It’s as if the game, through the NPC’s involved says go off and do as you please, we’ll wait for you here until you’re quite done scratching the itch to explore and adventure.

I haven’t played Red Dead Redemption so I can’t really comment on how that game deals with the issue, though from listening to the Podcast there were quite contrasting positions taken on the nature of the open world against the compelling narrative. Which game has done it best? Will it ever be seamless? Does it depend on what you want out of your gaming? I’d love to get some of your thoughts on this.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by KSubzero1000 »

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, although I'd like to point out that, in theory at least, open-world structure and narrative pacing aren't mutually exclusive, but in practice and due to other facets of modern design trends, it's fairly obvious how the two elements are often contradictory. This is actually one of the reasons why I tend to be so skeptical of open-world games in general. Giving the player two hundred options when three would suffice often works to the detriment of the game, and the urge to go off the beaten path will often work against the tightly paced and structured narrative experience intended by the writers. Side quests do compete with the main quest for the player's time and end up devaluing each other in the process.

There is a sliding scale of Freedom and Structure. You can only have so much of one before the other starts to suffer.

From what I remember, Red Dead Redemption is one that does it the best. And that's because the protagonist himself is often in the dark, unsure exactly where to go next and how to get there. But even then, the pacing is only good for an open-world game. It doesn't hold a candle to proper story-first experiences.

Even in open-world games I genuinely like, like Yakuza or the new God of War, there is almost always a period of playing time I choose to allocate to the secondary activities, even though I'd like to go on with the story as well. It does create an unpleasant dissonance, no doubt about it.

I think the only way it could ever be seamless is if developers started centering their writing around the systemic nature of the other elements of their games. Basically, make everything a side quest and ditch the tragic main quest altogether. Another solution I could think of would be to explore the concept of multiple protagonists in more depth. Why not have Character X stressfully participate in their world-ending event without any distractions, and Character Y pick up flowers and climb hills and help out the elderly in the same game world? Although I suppose that by doing so, the contradictory nature of the various systems would become painfully apparent...
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Bullus »

KSubzero1000 wrote: May 20th, 2018, 6:46 am There is a sliding scale of Freedom and Structure. You can only have so much of one before the other starts to suffer.

From what I remember, Red Dead Redemption is one that does it the best. And that's because the protagonist himself is often in the dark, unsure exactly where to go next and how to get there. But even then, the pacing is only good for an open-world game. It doesn't hold a candle to proper story-first experiences.
Thanks for your thoughts.

The above quoted section is rather interesting to me. Is it worth continuing to try and implement story first experiences into a vast open(ish) world? As much fun as exploring the world is in TW3, I'm not sure I could do only that. I do need some form of story/resolution to drive the game play, and the stronger the better. That said, I hate the feeling of being without choice in how to tackle the game and story. It's a complicated issue for me.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Well, I think that the traditional western open-world model with main quests, side quests, hundreds of locations, collectibles and characters has probably peaked with TW3 and Horizon this generation. Is it worth to continue to improve it? Maybe, but we're already past the point of diminishing returns. And I don't think that the dissonance you've mentioned is ever going to go away entirely.

But another thing worth pointing out is that the open-world concept can actually be interpreted in more varied ways than the aforementioned titles. Case in point: Shadow of the Colossus. By design, it is an open-world game, but it's not the kind of game that people usually associate with the label. And due to its restraint and lack of side-tracking activities, it manages to be a well-paced story-first experience set within a vast and intimidating game world.

Maybe that's another solution: Less filler content and tighter scripting.

In the end, nothing will ever beat specialized design. GTA's driving engine will never beat Burnout's driving engine. The Elder Scrolls' narrative pacing will never beat Ace Attorney's narrative pacing. And the main issue with AAA open-world games is that they end up spreading themselves too thin when trying to jam elements from a dozen different genres within one package. The end up result often being contradictory and unsatisfying.

Bullus wrote: May 20th, 2018, 7:25 am I do need some form of story/resolution to drive the game play, and the stronger the better. That said, I hate the feeling of being without choice in how to tackle the game and story. It's a complicated issue for me.
It's a complicated issue if you want both to occur within the same game, yes. The fact of the matter is, you can't be spectator and author at the same time. Following a well-written, tightly edited story is a passive experience. Wanting to get lost roaming around a virtual landscape is an active experience. So is wanting to decide what the characters will say or do next.

Hybrids are bound to compromise on both sides in order to meet in the middle. That's why "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" aren't winning literary awards. That's why Commander Shepard is an empty vessel devoid of strongly defined personality traits by default. That's why a not insignificant portion of Skyrim players don't even bother with the main storyline in the first place.

No single game will ever hit all the right marks at the same time. Specialized genre games like The Walking Dead or Ikaruga address this by way of completely ignoring certain elements in order to craft a specific experience. The pacing issues you describe are but an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of the "Quantity over Quality" design philosophy. And I think that RDR or TW3 are probably the best we can hope for in that regard. You can't combine Odyssey-caliber writing together with the satisfaction of turning around to go see what's been going on in Troy since you left, hunting down all the cyclopes in Greece to min/max your perk tree, and getting Odysseus hooked up with half the sirens he comes across. Never gonna happen.

As appealing as it may sound in theory, we can't have it all.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Chopper »

KSubzero1000 wrote: May 20th, 2018, 6:46 am Another solution I could think of would be to explore the concept of multiple protagonists in more depth. Why not have Character X stressfully participate in their world-ending event without any distractions, and Character Y pick up flowers and climb hills and help out the elderly in the same game world? Although I suppose that by doing so, the contradictory nature of the various systems would become painfully apparent...

That's a fantastic idea, I'd love to see that implemented in a game. In this version of Horizon Zero Dawn you control the Aloy twins, one of whom stays at home to look after the tribe :lol:
KSubzero1000 wrote: May 20th, 2018, 8:30 am It's a complicated issue if you want both to occur within the same game, yes. The fact of the matter is, you can't be spectator and author at the same time. Following a well-written, tightly edited story is a passive experience. Wanting to get lost roaming around a virtual landscape is an active experience. So is wanting to decide what the characters will say or do next.
Yeah, lots of people want a strong and compelling narrative, but people also want player agency. Some 'open world' games make you engage with the world as a means of creating the story - if you look at Deadly Premonition, KONA, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, they all provide context and backstory to the main plot by letting the player engage with the world via discovery. Getting out and about is critical to player engagement, and in a sense the player feels that they are creating and strengthening the story as they go along, if that makes sense.

Edit: I should say that all three are ‘detective’ games to some extent, where a knowledge of the locale could be seen as beneficial to the investigation.

The other most engaging open world games for me recently are survival games, such as The Long Dark and currently Conan Exiles. Again these are games where you create your own narrative via close engagement with the survival mechanics and the need to throroughly explore.

I've mostly abandoned the Ubigames, where there is no compelling reason to explore or even do a side mission apart from checking off a shopping list/get a better gun. Mad Max was the most recent of these, and I did a complete set of activities for one warlord, and then when they repeated for every other guy, I didn't do them. So I think that you're expected to take what you personally are happy with from these games. That tolerance will differ for everyone I guess.
Bullus wrote: May 20th, 2018, 5:25 am My own thinking on this has me falling into the camp of a small tweek might have gone a fair way to fixing it in the case of the Witcher 3, though not necessarily other games that may suffer a similar issue. If you add a need for Geralt to earn money to achieve his main goal, his only option is to fall back on his trade. This very trade would encourage and legitimise the need to take on the contracts already present in the game. The amount of gold required would not make it necessary to take on all contracts, but to get from Valen to Novigrad a certain amount of Witchering would be compulsory. Which quests and parts of the map delved into would entirely be the choice of the player. Put in a similar requirement for money to get from Novigrad to Skellige and then again to get back and hey presto I feel the disconnect with the main story and exploration while not totally eliminated would be reduced by a healthy percentage. But does such a change in the system limit the open world nature of the game as it exists to it's detriment?
I think that actually is the rationale for Geralt taking on jobs - that he is a witcher and he can decide who he helps etc. I don't know that it is expressly stated in the games but it was always my impression. I may be misremembering, but if you go overland to Novigrad isn't there a high toll on the road? And it costs 20K or something to get to Skellige.

Interesting topic. I know it's common to criticise open world games for this 'failing', but depending on the size of the world, you have to make some compromises, it seems.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Bullus »

Chopper wrote: May 20th, 2018, 9:18 am I think that actually is the rationale for Geralt taking on jobs - that he is a witcher and he can decide who he helps etc. I don't know that it is expressly stated in the games but it was always my impression. I may be misremembering, but if you go overland to Novigrad isn't there a high toll on the road? And it costs 20K or something to get to Skellige.
I don't know of any cost to get through to Novigrad, I received a pass from the Baron once I completed a section of his quests which allowed me to cross the Lloyd bridges into Oxenfert. Like you I can't quite remember the cost of getting to Skellige but I don't recall ever actually needing to save up to pay the piper, so it can't have been too expensive.

Yes he is a Witcher and can decide which contracts he wishes to take. I really enjoyed that aspect, I just felt that for me to spend a long time chasing quests when the over arcing story should be an urgent focus. It didn't break the game for me, and I only really came to understand what it was that didn't sit right with me after I had played a huge chunk of the game.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Chopper »

Oh, I half-remember the pass now. I believe I stole a boat and circumvented the bridge but my memory may be playing tricks there too.

By the time I got to novigrad I was burned out, I skipped every quest in the city and just paid for passage. 1000 crowns apparently, I did have to do a few sidequests to make it up.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Alex79 »

It's the Mass Effect thing isn't it, Shepherd needs to urgently save the world but will happily spend weeks cruising round the galaxy running errands for people first. It's an unsolvable problem I think, but not one that spoils games for me. I suppose a solution on the players part would be to complete the main story then spend the post game doing all the side quests. This would never work for me though, as (and I don't think I'm alone with this) can spend over a hundred hours with a game but instantly lose interest after the main storyline is done. So if I'd left all Geralts Witcher contracts until post credits, they'd never had been done at all. As it is, I was more than happy spending 140 hours in that world alternating between story and non essential stuff.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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Chopper wrote: May 20th, 2018, 9:18 am That's a fantastic idea, I'd love to see that implemented in a game. In this version of Horizon Zero Dawn you control the Aloy twins, one of whom stays at home to look after the tribe :lol:
I was thinking maybe like a GTA game with a family of three different protagonists. The husband would follow the usual storyline of a gangster chasing after the American Dream of Getting Shot atop a Pile of Money™ (main quest), the wife would be involved in lower-scale, nonviolent community activities (side quests), and the teenage son would be exploring the world on his BMX without a care in the world (free-roam, collectibles).

If you want to go one step further, you could even integrate their respective gameplay restrictions into their characterizations. The husband's inability to interact with his fellow citizens in a nonviolent manner would underline his slow but inexorable descent into villainy, the wife's hypocrisy of turning a blind eye to her husband's activities while spending his dubiously earned cash would be laid bare, and the son's immature frustration at not being able to just steal every car he sees or shoot his way out of trouble would explain his eventual glamorization of the outlaw lifestyle.

EDIT: Of course, those are just the obvious tropes. A clever writer could easily invert or subvert them for dramatic / provocative purposes.

I have no idea how feasible it would be or if it would even work as intended in the final product, but it seems like an idea worth exploring, at least. If you want to make a game about "Freedom", maybe show what the word would actually mean to different people?

I know that some games have kinda gone in that direction already, but I'd be interested to see a game commit more firmly to this type of structure.

Chopper wrote: May 20th, 2018, 9:18 am The other most engaging open world games for me recently are survival games, such as The Long Dark and currently Conan Exiles. Again these are games where you create your own narrative via close engagement with the survival mechanics and the need to throroughly explore.
That's actually a really good point. It's easy to just think of the usual AAA when talking about open-world games, but lower budget products like those you've mentioned can often make better use of the concept due to their higher creative freedom.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

Post by Michiel K »

My most radical opinion is that the primary strength of video games is not that of a medium for an author to deliver their story to an audience with, but for the audience to create their own stories through interaction. The end goal, then, would be open world, system based games, with very minimal non-interactive story moments in them. Kind of like what Breath of the Wild did?

Horses for courses and all that, but I think that's where you can get the most out of the distinctive qualities of video games, and I say that as an avid book reader, drama series watcher and student of play and film script writing.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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I’m not of the opinion that video games shouldn’t attempt to do strong narrative. That’s like telling a tv producer not to make costume dramas cause it’s only good for doing game shows.

I also think that the ‘vs’ in the thread title shouldn’t be seen as a dividing line either. The whole thing is a spectrum.

Both Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn use the same basic story telling device. There’s a plot to the part of the game you play, but its scope is relatively limited because there’s an amount of player freedom that complicates that. There’s also a secondary plot that is revealsed in non-interactive flashback form as reward for completing the missions of the game. This secondary plot is much more interesting than the ‘present day’ one, (also, Horizon does this better than Breath of the Wild does, don’t @ me).

An open world game with no plot at all that is simply ‘here’s a world, go play’ is something I find very difficult to enjoy. Many people love them though, the biggest of them all is Minecraft.

Managing that dissonance then is the struggle. You want the player to explore and reveal the plots as they go, but if you stick anything in there that feels like there should be some time pressure the structure can feel off.

I think games like Deus Ex and the recent Prey reboot are a good example of being on this continuum but tucked more down the narrative end than the open world one. The main location in Prey is mostly open to you, bar a small amount of gear gating, but when the plot needs to it shuts areas off or restricts your movement. Never in a way that feels artificial though.

Another example is gta5. I actually liked the plot in that, especially the ‘take a third option’ ending choice. But for some that story gets in the way of them playing with a sandbox.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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Flabyo wrote: May 24th, 2018, 1:54 pmI also think that the ‘vs’ in the thread title shouldn’t be seen as a dividing line either. The whole thing is a spectrum.
Absolutely. One of the many beauties of this incredible medium is that it can do so many things in so many different ways. I want to soak up all these experiences and am happy for creators to continue to try their hands with all sorts of approaches.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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I can get behind that.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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Alex79uk wrote: May 20th, 2018, 9:56 am It's the Mass Effect thing isn't it, Shepherd needs to urgently save the world but will happily spend weeks cruising round the galaxy running errands for people first. It's an unsolvable problem I think, but not one that spoils games for me. I suppose a solution on the players part would be to complete the main story then spend the post game doing all the side quests. This would never work for me though, as (and I don't think I'm alone with this) can spend over a hundred hours with a game but instantly lose interest after the main storyline is done. So if I'd left all Geralts Witcher contracts until post credits, they'd never had been done at all. As it is, I was more than happy spending 140 hours in that world alternating between story and non essential stuff.
Yes I understand what you mean. I was driven by the story and I did meander and explore a great deal while completing the game but once I finished the story arc & DLC story lines I felt no desire to swing by all of the areas I had yet to explore (Mostly Skellige sea bound and tiny island ?s) - My exploration didn't break the game for me, it just that upon reflection it feels that the two things didn't gel and that I am not sure if they ever really can.
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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Michiel K wrote: May 24th, 2018, 10:56 am My most radical opinion is that the primary strength of video games is not that of a medium for an author to deliver their story to an audience with, but for the audience to create their own stories through interaction. The end goal, then, would be open world, system based games, with very minimal non-interactive story moments in them. Kind of like what Breath of the Wild did?

Horses for courses and all that, but I think that's where you can get the most out of the distinctive qualities of video games, and I say that as an avid book reader, drama series watcher and student of play and film script writing.
That's interesting to me as I love exploring the story written into games -> when they (the writing, delivery and topics explored) are to my liking of course. I'm struggling to really delve into Skyrim for example as the main quest line hasn't grabbed me and enticed me to find out what happens next so while the exploration is fun it goes kind of flat for me after a while. I'm not trying to say your view isn't valid because of course it is, it's just that it's totally different to mine.

Also, I'm sad to say that I;m yet to get into the most recent Zelda. A lack of both time and money have prevented me from being able to invest either facet towards it yet. I've heard great things though so it's something I really want to get to one day.

Anyway, off to mow the lawns and then watch some football.

Cheers,
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Re: Open World Games vs Strong Narrative threads

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ratsoalbion wrote: May 24th, 2018, 2:14 pm
Flabyo wrote: May 24th, 2018, 1:54 pmI also think that the ‘vs’ in the thread title shouldn’t be seen as a dividing line either. The whole thing is a spectrum.
Absolutely. One of the many beauties of this incredible medium is that it can do so many things in so many different ways. I want to soak up all these experiences and am happy for creators to continue to try their hands with all sorts of approaches.
Yes that was probably pretty clumsy of me in the thread title. I too don't think it's a case of either or but I wanted to explore if the facets of one made it impossible to truly implement the other in a cohesive product.

Clear as mud?
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