Let’s talk about writing in video games. That’s the reason I started this blog really. I read a lot of theorizing and analyzing of video games on this big ol’ internet but almost none of it is about the written aspect. Which sort of makes sense. When video games first emerged they were an art form created by computer science people who scraped together the writing they could from their own ability. Not to say it was all bad. Some computer science people are amazing writers. But that’s not what they’re best at and modern video games still haven’t recovered from that. Only recently is the writer of a video game turning into a distinct entity who we know and care about. Think about Karen Traviss writing Gears of War 3. That is actually a person that some people might know about. She has written honest to god books. Shit is getting legitimate up in this bitch. But getting novelists to write our video games is a very very recent occurrence. And other than that we barely have any indication that publishers are trying to increase the quality in the stories in our games. My point is we need to start discussing the ideas behind writing a good game more openly. Let’s get a discussion going and see where it takes us. I’ll start.
Did you read this? I did and I don’t know how much I really want to talk about it. I mean, it’s reductive and not the way to have a conversation on the matter. The headline is a massive generalization that he goes on to back up with only one example: LA Noire. And let’s be honest here, LA Noire was not a good game. Especially when it comes to storytelling. The much-hailed interrogation sections were barely improved version of those old FMV games that gave you no more choice than picking between two paths when you came to a forked road in your journey. But I don’t want to get into LA Noire right now, and I really don’t want to get into all the reasons why Tadhg Kelly is stupid and wrong. See? See what happens to me? I’m like an animal.
However, I do want to adress one part of what he says in that article:
“Games like Portal 2, Ico and Uncharted 2 give the impression that stuff’s going on, that you’re a part of it, and that it’s urgent. They have great storysense. Characters may talk while you’re doing stuff; things may happen; but the details, the structure, the drama?
They don’t matter. Not really.”
That’s true about every form of storytelling. The idea of narrative fiction of any brand is that you are conveying a story that isn’t actually happening in the present to the audience but you are trying to make the audience feel like they are invested in it anyway. When you are watching E.T. and you are crying because that alien is going through some serious shit, it isn’t because you really like ugly rubber puppets. It’s because you see the actor and he is barely keeping it together and then this music comes in and it’s just… gah! Spielberg is manipulating you using filmic techniques so that you feel bad for an animatronic doll (if it isn’t clear yet, I think ET is one of the worst puppets in film history.) Every writer who has ever lived is just trying to manipulate you into enjoying their imaginary world. And that’s not a bad thing.
Kelly claims that the pace and flow of the story is in the hands of the player so the designers can’t really tell a story for that reason. Bullshit. Look no further than the glory that is the original Super Mario Bros. At the beginning of the game the player knows to run to the right of the screen. And why is that? Because Mario starts facing right. That is a decision that a designer made to subtly manipulate the player into doing what the story demanded of them while still making the player feel like they were interacting with the game. Now just take that idea and expand it until you have a full game where the player always knows where they are supposed to go and what they are supposed to do. Bam, perfect story told by a video game.
But I am just ranting now. And I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. Hell, I am almost a thousand words in here and I haven’t even started talking about what I meant to talk about. Remember the title of this post? Yeah, that’s the game. And it’s a big one too. Especially for me. Because Majora’s Mask is far and away my favorite game of all time (well, tied for favorite, but that is another post.) Where do I even start? Well I guess I start with this. Go read that link. I’ll wait.
Now why did I have you read somebody discussing why Majora’s Mask is great in my post discussing why Majora’s Mask is great? Because I agree with everything that guy says and it saves me the time of repeating everything. However I still feel the need to make this post because he fails to even mention the single aspect of that game that elevates it to legendary status in my mind: The bomber’s notebook. For those of you who didn’t play the game, the bombers was a gang of young kids who had it in their mind to help as many people as they could. You joined them very early in the game and when you did they gave you a notebook to keep track of all of the people you helped. There were thirty people in the game that you had the option to put in your notebook. And all of this was completely optional. The most engrossing element of the game was a side quest that I am guessing most people didn’t care much about, if they even found it at all in the first place.
In case you didn’t read the link about Majora’s Mask and have never played the game yourself it is important for me to reiterate the situation of the game. You step into an alternate universe that is in the middle of a big problem, there is a rambunctious forest child running around known as a skull kid. Normally skull kids are barely a hinderance to anybody and their jokes and japes never escalate beyond the rank of hooliganism. However, this kid has gotten his hands on a mask that contains the spirit of an ancient and evil god. So now the moon is going to crash into the planet in three days and you need to stop it. Fortunately you have your own divine help from the goddess of time so in groundhogs day style you can redo those three days again and again until you get them right.
That’s the main quest. It involves you traipsing through dungeons and fighting monsters to blah blah blah. It’s the same thing you do in every other game. I’m bored already. Fortunately that is not the only thing that the skull kid has ruined. You see, the town you have entered is currently in preparations to celebrate the biggest festival of the year. The dairy farm is going into overtime to supply the festival, a circus is coming through town, the mayor’s son is about to have his wedding. There could not possibly be a more busy and therefore worse time for shit to get all fucked up. And that’s exactly what the skull kid has done. The bomber’s notebook is how you keep track of all of those people that have all sorts of other problems.
And oh what problems they are. Everything from a guy who is trapped in the bathroom because the hotel ran out of toilet paper and he needs you to bring him some to the previously mentioned mayor’s son who has disappeared right before he was to be wed. That first problem barely takes you any time at all to figure out how to solve, but the wedding debacle has thrown easily a dozen people into conniptions. His mother hires you to find him and you interact with any lead you can find until finally you discover that the skull kid has turned the man into a child. And not only that but a thief has stolen his wedding mask (this worlds version of a wedding ring. Also have you noticed the theme the game has yet?) and he is too ashamed to show his face before he gets it back. Finally retrieving the mask is a job that takes the whole three days and when you finally reunite the two lovers on the midnight of the third day as the moon is about to destroy everything in existence they decide to stay together no matter what. The world is literally shaking itself to pieces and they are embracing in their last moments thanks to you. It is bitingly melancholy and the fact that even though you won you are going to just return to the beginning of the three days before they have been reunited weighs heavy on your mind.
I think I need to say again that that is a SIDE QUEST. A meaty one sure, but a side quest nonetheless. Seriously, most games would kill to have that kind of emotional depth in their one and only story. Yet Majora’s Mask has that represented in just one of it’s arguably thirty one stories.
We have now reached a point where I think that I am required to explain what I am getting at. In order to bring it back around to the idea of video game writing, I would like to say that in order to make a convincing world for the participant, video games require more writing than any other equivalent narrative media. Let me clarify. For an example, let us compare a scene in a restaurant in a movie to the same scene in a video game. For this thought experiment let’s set the conditions of the scene as a secret agent has been called in to search this restaurant because someone eating there at the moment is a Russian spy. Now in the movie version the secret agent walks into the restaurant, requests a table for him and his obscenely good looking date and is brought to the table. Perhaps he makes some witty banter with his date. And while this is happening he is discreetly glancing around the room in order to catch bits and pieces of what the other characters are saying to get clues. He then notices the waiter coming to his table is drawing a gun at which point he has a tense verbal showdown with the waiter, ending in the waiter’s death or somesuch. Exciting and terse for the most part.
Now let’s look at the video game version of that. Upon walking into the restaurant you are again guided to your table where you are free to choose which table you listen in on (for the purposes of making this example closer to the film I am assuming that this game does not allow to interrogate each table.) In order for there to be some sense of reality and so as to not have the other people constantly repeating the same three lines over and over again, there would need to be at least thirty to sixty seconds of dialogue recorded per table. Then when you finally have the info to confront the server who you now know to be suspicious (remember, this is a video game so much more agency needs to be given to the player than in the movie) you are dropped into a branching dialogue tree. This means that for every response you are able to choose from, the writer of the game had to write a different comeback for the Russian spy. And maybe the dialogue might end with or without his death depending on your choices. This results in the writer having to write different versions of scenes further down the line.
That all ends up being the difference between one hundred words int he movie and one thousand words in the video game. Not a giant increase, but when taken over the course of a whole game, which are longer than movies anyway, it is a major increase in pure hours of work on the part of the writer. This is why the industry always runs into issues when trying to make a world that lives and breaths. No matter how many hours of radio broadcasts you write and record for a Grand Theft Auto game, there will come a point where the player has heard that same interview with Thor the God of Thunder a dozen times and that is when the world breaks down and starts to feel like a fake set.
Conversely, Majora’s Mask never has that moment. Because of the nature of the three day cycle, the writer of the game was allowed to write only a limited amount of action for each character and then be done with it. It actually adds more depth than most games of that nature have. The cliche is of course the man who walks back and forth in front of the item shop telling you that, “The item shop sells many things” over and over again no matter how many times you talk to him. Even the games that give their characters schedules feel bizarre. Take Harvest Moon for example, what person always goes to the library every Tuesday and Thursday between five and six PM on the dot? A crazy one. But everybody in those games has schedules like that that they never deviate from.
Because Majora’s Mask simply has the same three days repeating over and over again it makes sense that the foreman for the construction team is always telling his employees to work faster. In another game that would just feel silly because you know that it is just a game and they won’t actually finish until you do the right mission. But now instead of feeling like the game is silly, the game draws you in further with that line; you know they will never finish because the moon is going to kill them all before they ever get the chance to.
The same goes for the circus ringleader who will always be found crying into a drink at the bar on the night of the second day. OR any of the characters, there is a deep deep sense of ennui and helplessness throughout this world that is only enhanced by repetition.
What I am trying to say is that we need to stop trying to use video games to create a world that goes on forever. We need to instead use video games to create perfect and contained moments. As Tim Roger’s says in his superb analysis of this same idea, “If you can, make a game that presents fifteen hectic minutes in a perfectly envisioned world on the brink of disaster.” Only when we sop looking at the macro and really start honing down into specific moments will we get to the true joy of video games and (in my perspective) narrative art in general: participating in perfect and exhilarating moments.
– The Loquacious Fool
Waiting for Miyamoto 