Blog - More on Fate, Theme and Games
Tuesday, December 16, 2008Hmm, well, speaking of fate as a theme in games:
I was playing through some old SNES games for nostalgia, and one of them was a game called SOS. It's an adventure game where you try to escape a sinking Titantic-esque ship, often trying to lead other passengers and crew to safety.
There are several characters to choose, each with their own storylines.
As such, there's multiple endings. Not only does each character get their own ending, but the ending changes depending on the other people you manage to lead to safety as well.
Now, one character's story begins with him tending to his sister, who is badly-ill. As he leaves her to rest, he expresses his doubts that he can keep helping her. Over the course of this cutscene, he leaves his room and travels around the ship.
Shortly after that sequence, the ship is capsized by a giant wave and the game starts.
This time I managed to actually trace my way back to the character's room, finding the sister still alive.
I had remembered winning the game several times without her, resulting in an ending where my character is rescued, but lamenting that he couldn't save her.
So, having found her, I was determined to save her. After all, feeling like you couldn't help her was established as a theme.
I painstakingly worked my way through the game with her (collected a few others along the way) and wound up with the following ending:
You get to the end, and there's no way to escape. Tired and weak from the journey, your sister dies in your arms, and you're left waiting to drown.
Because the other two people I had dragged there were mysteriously dead at the start of this cutscene, it leads me to believe that no matter what you do, if you rescue your sister your fate is the same. You can't save her, and dye trying.
Now, admittedly, that works with the theme. Your character was right all along: he isn't able to save her no matter how hard he tries. As an artistic statement, I think that's kind of cool. Another good example of using game mechanics to communicate meaning.
But as a player, good lord is that ever unsatisfying.
Because games are usually about a challenge, and this game is much harder to complete while rescuing people than it is to go it alone, I assumed that the character's initial claims of "I don't think I can save her" was a challenge I was meant to overcome.
I put in a lot of extra effort in trying to save her, and was rewarded a worse ending than if I hadn't bothered! It was thematically more powerful, maybe, but an ending where everyone dies? How fun!
In good game design, the rewards should be proportional to the player effort.
Does this apply to elements of the story? I suppose it depends on the needs of the story.
The ending in question violates the proportional rewards rule, but it was done to make an artistic statement, and create a certain mood. I don't think anyone can say the developers made the wrong call.
It's given me something to think about anyway.
In other news, today is the day that I'm giving my talk.
I'm speaking at my former highschool about the game industry and how to break in. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:26 AM 3 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Fate in games
Saturday, December 13, 2008On the Writer's SIG mailing list there is discussion of theme in games again.
Something I was just watching earlier today made me think of themes dealing with fate.
I'm personally not fan of the concept of fate, but I find that it's often featured in stories.
I wonder if fate is attractive to storytellers because fate is a metaphor for how characters function in stories.
Characters are intentionally created, built to do specific meaningful things, and fill certain voids. A storyteller's characters are literally fated to perform their roles.
So, if that's true, then I'm wondering to what degree games can (and do) shake this up.
While NPCs are characters in the traditional sense, any player character is granted a kind of free will. Players can often choose to ignore their intended role. They can challenge their 'destiny'. (Whether or not the game will accept the challenge is another matter...)
I'm sure quite a few games have already addressed this struggle. Bioshock springs to mind.
Many stories support the notion of destiny, fate, etc. How many games do, and if so, why? When it comes to the dynamics, games seem in opposition to the notion of fate. After all, when a game forces the player down a certain path, the game is derided as being "on rails".
Even (especially?) as players, humans crave free will. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:19 AM 1 Comments Links to this post