The Future of Story Telling — A Glimpse into the gaming world
As of now the most coveted way to tell a story is by making a movie, and in the last 50 years, there have been several timeless movies that many people hold dear in their hearts. This however may change.
There are timeless films out there that invoke certain strong emotions. Whether it’s through joy, fear, sorrow, or rage, amazing storytellers can magically captivate your heart.
In an early scene in the animated movie “UP”, the love story of the male protagonist Carl is told. Even though the scene is only ten minutes long, feelings of happiness, grief, and sympathy were weaved through creative imagery and cinematic storytelling.
What do all these have to do with gaming you say? If you have ever played a horror game, then you know the experience is vastly different from watching a horror film.
Imagine being in a dark hallway of an abandoned asylum with a grotesque abomination that is searching for you in the endless corridors with clicks of metal chains and screams of the unknown. The only way out is for you to navigate your character to avoid and hide from danger and the guarantee of escape is uncertain.
When getting put straight into a situation where you have to make every decision rather than just watching a scripted character in a horror film, the feeling of immersion is a whole different experience.
Chapter 1 — The Evolution of Video Games
Before we dive into the complex world of video games, we need to provide some background knowledge. Before the rise of console and PC gaming, as most people now are familiar with, games such as the iconic “Pacman” and “Donkey Kong” were played on arcade machines, captivating players worldwide. Thanks to these games, the arcade culture spiked in popularity with pioneering game design. This leads us to the 1980s, commonly referred to as the “Golden Age” for video games. These games solidified gaming as a form of mainstream entertainment.
Up until the 1990s, games were primarily focused on game mechanics, usually with a simple story concept to give the player a sense of purpose and narrative.
Then came the late 1990s-2000s, the era where 16-bit consoles rose to the top of the market, which saw significant advancements in 3D graphics, thanks to home consoles like the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Masterpieces such as “Super Mario 64” and “Final Fantasy VII” showcased immersive 3D worlds, engaging gameplay, and cinematic storytelling.
As we get closer to the present-day time, the introduction of the iPhone opened a whole new world of mobile gaming. Well-known games in this generation such as “Angry Birds” and “Candy Crush” took over the gaming market by storm, reaching an audience who didn’t bother or have the luxury of having access to a console.
The convenience of being able to carry your gaming device with you and have your favorite games a click away was too enticing. A new wave of mobile game enjoyers quickly discovered the joy of gaming.
At last, we come to the present day, when the past decade has witnessed such rapid advancement in graphics technology, the boundaries of realism and immersion have shattered time and time again.
Consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, along with the introduction of ray tracing and high-resolution displays have brought unprecedented visual fidelity. Games like “God of War (2018)”, “Death Stranding” and “Red Dead Redemption 2” came through with breathtaking graphics, and opened up the possibility of movie-like cinematic storytelling. Earning the title of a must-play for hardcore gamers.
The massive advancements in video game graphics brought forth high-quality remakes of classic titles in the gaming industry. The remakes of ”Final Fantasy VII” and “Resident Evil 2” did an amazing job by keeping the core values of the original games while giving the game a facelift. Quality of life changes are introduced along with the graphics updates, thus improving the gameplay experience, and satisfying both new and old players alike. This gives us a clear comparison of how games have evolved.
Chapter 2 — Interactivity of Gameplay
So what makes playing games a better experience than watching a movie? Movies have long been a popular choice for their ability to transport us to different worlds and tell compelling stories, however, video games take interactivity to a whole new level, offering an active and participatory experience that goes beyond passive viewing.
It all comes down to interactivity on a few different levels: Active Participation, Player Agency (giving players the ability to make meaningful decisions about their actions that will affect the game), Interactive Plot, Pacing, and Real-Time Events. These are the elements that set gaming apart through interaction.
Players can affect the story and experience, and the execution of gameplay and cinematics is paramount; one is in charge of bringing players to have fun in the game while the other keeps them invested in an interesting world. Let’s break down how these two interactions work with each other to deliver a smooth experience.
First, we talk about how participation completely changes how you feel. When watching a movie, we as viewers are passive observers sitting back and witnessing the story unfold. The narrative is predetermined and proceeds at a fixed pace, which can feel like you’re just in for the ride.
Like the aforementioned example, watching a horror film doesn’t put you in the shoes of the protagonist, and although you feel empathic toward the protagonist, you can’t completely immerse in the content.
Chapter 3 — How did they scare you in RE2?
The hit remake of “Resident Evil 2” showcases how a horrifying environment spells discomfort. The narrative is set in a pandemic outbreak in Raccoon City and the main protagonists are unaware of the zombie outbreak. One goes into the city in search of her brother while the other is just arriving for duty as a rookie officer. Both of them are violently interrupted on their way to the Raccoon City Police Department (aka RPD), getting put right into the midst of the disaster with very limited resources and struggling to survive.
These elements apply to the gameplay as well; the player starts with only 10 rounds of ammunition and a few healing items while encountering 2–3 zombies. The player must make real-time decisions on whether to take the hit from the zombie, use bullets on them, or take a high-risk maneuver to try and avoid them in a narrow hallway. Any of the three choices leaves you with fewer resources, and who knows what lurks around the next corner? These designated decisions keep you on the edge of your chair while venturing into the zombie-invested halls of the RPD.
Apart from scripted jumpscares that movies also utilize, it’s visually terrifying and leaves you with a feeling of eeriness through unexpected encounters that are spread throughout the game when you’re unsure if a zombie busts through the countless windows that you see right beside you, or the silent bodies laying on the ground that appeared dead, slowly rise back up once you walk past them, urging you to pluck up the courage and run across the creepy halls.
It gets worse. Running across the hall makes loud noises that attract unwanted attention from monsters that are worse than zombies, forcing you to walk painfully slow through the halls, and when it all happens at once, panic sets in, the paranoia of violent encounters the next time you enter a new hallway. The player is thrown into the characters’ shoes, and a single mistake could spell disaster.
While “Resident Evil 2” is a great example of how games use the advantage of interactable environments and real-time events, however, the trajectory of the story is not affected by the choices of your action, which is fine for games that have a linear storyline.
But the games that give you the ability to change the outcome of the story of the character that you control instantly give more weight to the choices that you make, and this type of aspect of gameplay usually leads to games with more emphasis on the morality of the story instead of the combat or gameplay of the games, which in turn can lead to a story with deeper depth.
Chapter 4 — The Power of POV-Detroit: Become Human
A great example of this type of game is “Detroit: Become Human” transported to the near future of 2038 the city of Detroit, once called “Motor City” has now become a city of androids, supposedly servants of humans, the androids roaming the city started behaving as if they are alive in recent days and due to humans treating androids like tools to the point of treating them like slaves, the conflict between the two parties starts brewing.
The players are put into three distinct characters Connor, Kara, and Markus, all of whom are androids with different goals to achieve. Their stories seemingly without any connection, however, as their stories develop deeper the effects on each character's stories become more and more apparent and intertwined with each other.
In the chapter “Freedom March” the player plays as Markus a freedom fighter for androids, during this scene you are given two choices, whether to give up the march or continue with the march inevitably leads to a violent end.
The two choices lead to drastically different outcomes, directly affecting both Connor’s decision later on in his story and Kara’s fate, planting a seed that you saw later on in the game. It isn’t just this one scene, every other scenario in the story are given difficult choices that affect other characters’ outcome, the story comes out with 85 different endings, really putting the plotline in the players’ hands.
These two examples showed how different games use different ways to showcase their story, and there are countless different games out there with very creative ways to let you experience stories that are just as amazing if not better than modern-day films. Films allow us to empathize with the characters through actors’ expressions, giving us a chance to experience another person’s story. While films take us on a journey, Games put the players as an initiator rather than an observer.
While films have always been a great way to tell stories and will continue to be so, in the last 10 years gaming has improved in more ways than one, it may be a little expensive at first glance but the money is worth spending for how much the game developers have put their souls into the magical world they so whole heartily create.
I wish to dedicate this article to those who never thought of giving gaming a try or those who only have ever played a mobile game, so maybe next time when you are wondering what TV show or movie to watch. Just so you know that there are games with amazing stories and a vast world out there waiting to be explored.
