Video game story telling

There are different ways to tell a story in a video game, each one has pros and cons, but I think some leave a better impact than others.

Each of these following games perceived a story in a different way.

The Longest Journey – The point and click adventure which was very story driven, each solving of a puzzle would reward you with a little more of the story than you had before and sometimes cutting to a cinematic scene which takes you out of the game play, hence basically watching a movie.

Diablo 2 – A point and click RPG, this game conveyed its stories by dialog when you spoke with NPCs, this progressed the main story. However after each chapter the player was rewarded with a cinematic scene. The cinematic was part of a story that had in the timeline of your character already happened, or was a few steps ahead of you. So you weren’t learning any more about your character or what had happened at this moment, it was more about the back story and how it brought you to “this point.”

Civilization IV – Civilization has no primary story to speak or, not text book written of a story, its kind of a create your own. The story of your civilization starts to unfold as you interact with your environment and other cultures, its almost like a super “create your own story book adventure” except with infinite possibilities. While it doesn’t go deep into the characters or personal situations, the civilizations and challenges become characters themselves.

Half Life – Less is more. The game never removes you from your view, it never says “hey look that’s the main villain over there!” it just unfolds around and in front of you but leads you in an inevitable direction. To me this is one of the most brilliant pieces of story telling because it forces the player to discover the world and push the story itself, much like how Portals story telling was, simply brilliant.

At some point I will try to construct a video game story, I think similar in the story telling design of half life where you are immersed as the character on this journey.