Lucas Versantvoort / September 18, 2014
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| Fig. 1 - the council telling it like it is |
More and
more games these days like Mass Effect allow you to make choices,
through multiple choice questions, timed button presses, etc. These games allow
the gamer to basically express their own thoughts, morals and in doing so
directly influence (a part of) the game’s storyline. The gamer is granted the
feeling that he’s actively creating his own story. This, however, is not completely
true, of course. The gamer is merely granted the illusion of choice.
Game developer Bioware’s Mass
Effect series is a perfect example (talk about beating a dead horse…),
because one of the game’s primary appealing factors is the fact that you, as
has been stated many times, are able to create “your own Shepard” [the main character],
that “your choices matter” (fig. 1). You, as Shepard, have to save the universe
from a gigantic threat known as the Reapers. This adventure spans three games
and allows the gamer to make many different types of choices. Important
decisions include: at the end of the first game, do you save the Council? Do
you keep the Collector Base instead of destroying it in Mass Effect 2?
These are two key decisions, since they take place at the end of both part 1
and 2. So you’d think your decisions here would have a great impact in how the
story develops, but the truth is, they don’t. If you save the Council, you get
a short conversation with them in ME2 among other things, but nothing
really changes. The story will basically proceed in the same way as if you had
sacrificed the Council. Same thing with the Collector Base. You’d think saving
or destroying it, would have a massive impact on Mass Effect 3, since
it’s the end-game decision, but all it changes is that you get a few
extra War Assets in ME3 and it changes one or two parts of a
conversation with the Illusive Man (who wants you to save the base).
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| Fig. 2 |
This is all made worse by the
infamous ending to ME3. Whereas Bioware told the gaming community how
their choices through all three games would impact 3’s ending to the point
where you wouldn’t be able to typically tell whether you got ending A or B (in
other words: countless, nuanced endings), the end result was something entirely
different. In the end, you can only make three different choices during which
the choices you made throughout the trilogy matter not. Gamers were promised a
branching storyline which would reflect your actions throughout the trilogy
(which would look something like fig. 2), in the end the storyline’s branches
all ‘collapsed’ to three choices (more resembling fig. 3 except with three
endings).
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| Fig. 3 |
Another popular game which focuses on gamer
choice is Telltale’s The Walking Dead. It follows the basic premise of
many zombie films, using the zombie apocalypse as a background for social
interaction between a variety of characters. The player controls Lee, who is on
his way to prison for murder when a zombie makes the car crash allowing Lee to
escape. He stumbles upon a girl, Clementine, and together they head out looking
for others, trying to survive. You, as Lee, will encounter many different
people and you will engage in many a conversation with them. Indeed,
conversations are easily the most important part of the games besides combat
which mostly consists of timed-button presses. So important is gamer choice
that Telltale includes a notice at the start of the game, saying: ‘This game
series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play.’ And
yet, even in this game which proudly totes its promise of being able to create
‘your own’ story, suffers from many of the same problems that also plagues Mass
Effect.
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| Fig. 4 - Indeed |
We thus arrive at the two opposing
forces in player-driven games: choice vs drama. Being given the ability to make
choices in-game as a player, gives the player a feeling of control, the ability
to drastically alter the fates of characters and the game world. This is
however an illusion as the game world is controlled by the developers that made
the game. In Mass Effect and The Walking Dead, both companies want
to tell dramatic, engaging stories. This cannot be done by giving the player
the ability to do anything he wants. It would mean creating a story-driven
game with nearly infinite possibilities which would be too much work (fig. 4).
Therefore, a compromise between player choice and ‘pre-written’ drama is
inevitable. The player is allowed to make choices within the confines of the
story the company has made. Certain events can be influenced by the gamer,
whereas others cannot.
This has an interesting effect
however: gamers are more likely to protest against inevitable outcomes they
don’t like. I think this has to do with the difference between video games and
other media capable of producing fiction like films and books. Whereas the
viewer accepts a film as a complete whole, one which he has no control over, a
video game is by its very nature interactive. The player can control (to
a certain degree) what’s happening on screen. Add to that the fact that The
Walking Dead and Mass Effect emphasize player-choice and the reason
why gamers are more likely to protest against certain inevitable outcomes they
don’t like, becomes much clearer. The viewer knows it has no control over a
film, but a gamer playing a player-choice driven game is unlikely to
immediately accept what’s happening in the story as unchangeable when the whole
purpose of the game is that you, the gamer, control the outcome.
This is (among many reasons…) why
many were/are upset over Mass Effect 3’s ending: it wasn’t the ending of
your Shepard’s story, but merely three standard endings (basically
good/neutral/evil). As such, it didn’t feel like the logical outcome of the
ways in which you’ve been playing as Shepard. Control and player-choice were
drastically reduced (or even removed) in favor of making a grand statement
about human life in general. Drama came before player choice.
Mass Effect offers another
example of choice being taken away from the player. I refer to the character of
Thane, an assassin who is capable of being romanced by a female Shepard. Thane
is very ill however and it’s only a matter of time before he dies. This raises
a question: should he die for the sake of drama and as a form of penance, since
he’s killed so many in his life? Or should you have the option of saving him, somehow
finding a cure and risk losing the former’s potential for drama? Allowing Thane
to live would negate the penance-subplot, but it would benefit the romance.
Bioware chose the former: Thane dies and there’s nothing you can do about it.
This led to some discussion whether or not you should have been capable of
saving him. People couldn’t bear watching the story develop in a way they
didn’t want it to, because it was supposed to be their story, since Mass
Effect was player-driven.
Another example can be found in The
Walking Dead. (Warning: massive spoilers). There is a shocking scene in
Episode 3 when there’s an argument between on the one hand Carley and Ben and
on the other hand Lilly who is convinced Carley and Ben have betrayed the group
by sneakily stealing medical supplies. You, as Lee, can side with one or the
other in this argument, but no matter what you do or what you say, eventually
Lilly shoots Carley at point-blank range. This is one of the game’s inevitable
outcomes. Despite the game designers emphasizing how this game is player-choice
driven and how it ‘adapts to your choices,’ you have zero control over this
event. Again, because the gamer had so much control over events up to this
point, there is a greater sense of frustration here than in other media, as to
why this had to happen. Why can’t I save Carley? Why do I have control over
this and not over that?
Telltale decided to go for drama. Before
she’s shot, you (Lee) have a chance of becoming a bit closer to her. Many
gamers (including yours truly) liked Carley, so people got liked seeing their
relationship develop. Then Telltale decided to use this sympathy to create
drama (basically preying on the viewer’s emotional attachments, but hey…that’s
drama), by shortly afterwards letting Carley get killed by Lilly. I was shocked
when I first saw I, but, more importantly, I remember one of the first things I
thought was ‘I’m going to check the internet real quick to see if there’s a way
of saving her.’ This is extremely telling of what I’ve been saying up till now,
about how we’re less likely to accept events in a player-choice driven video
game than in other media. Rather than accept what happened, I went online hoping
to find a way to change Carley’s fate. Imagine my frustration when I found there
was none.
So, in the examples above we see the
conflict between the companies’ desire to tell a dramatic story and the nature
of player- and choice-driven games. If certain inevitable outcomes are changed
on the player’s behalf, it can drastically reduce the drama and perhaps the
whole point of a narrative. Would I have liked to see Carley live? Of course.
Would I have liked to see Thane survive? Yes. But at the same time I understand
the developers’ need to tell an engaging, dramatic story with Big Messages etc.
and this requires certain parts of the story to be unchangeable. One starts
wondering whether there’s a balance to be found between catering to the
players’ demands and compelling drama.
What about a solution? Obviously, I
don’t have one. One would think giving the player more control over everything
would be better. Everyone could decide for themselves the fate of characters
like Carley and Thane. But it's hard to make that work in
terms of drama. You can compare it to another game, WWE ’13. In this wrestling game, you are capable of creating your
own storylines, just like how storylines in the WWE are also written
beforehand. While a nice feature, it doesn’t create any potential for drama at
all, since the player is constantly aware he’s literally controlling everyone
and everything. It’s impossible for him to ‘lose himself’ in the story. This is
why 'pre-written' drama in video games is a necessity to some extent. You can
see how this tension between choice and drama remains both a problematic and
interesting topic of discussion.
Images:
http://i.qkme.me/36ji4h.jpg
http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/level-10-nonlinear-storytelling/
http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/111/1116274/20-Branching_1282863885.jpg
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