- Gearoid Reidy
In response to "Next-Gen Storytelling" from The Escapist Forum: The question of interactivity in narratives, I think, is still too new to give a real strong guideline to game narrative - which is why it's a good thing that there's articles like this. The Interactive Fiction movement has found a standardized set of tools in the Z-Machine interpreter, which is simultaneously freer and more limited than any video game. Would a better framework be preferable? Well, certainly a parser that doesn't require a strict verb-noun construction, but that's just a readability improvement. I'm not convinced that new ways to interact with the world are needed in IF's case (just new ways to get that interaction from the user to the game).
Some stories are not well-served by allowing the player to interact with the game world in any way they can imagine. In fact, I would say that, generally, the most satisfying examples of any medium are the ones conceived of as if operating under severe limitations, and then made without them (but acting as if they were largely still there).
I would agree that, without any way to put real actors in an interactive medium, simplifications and abstractions of the story's elements would without a doubt be the ideal choice. Don't assume that's automatically a "cartoon" thing, though. Even books provide only a very limited description of a thing's traits. A cartoon is just one example of excluding detail in a visual medium. Detail does need to be excluded, however.
- Bongo Bill
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/category/437" title="" target="_blank">The Author's Resaponse: Bongo Bill makes some interesting points. To clarify, I'm not proposing that more world interaction is necessarily The Right Answer and I'm CERTAINLY not saying that total freedom from constraint leads to a better player experience or story. I'm often accused of promoting the idea of choice above all else, but I don't believe that at all - as you point out, operating under "severe limitations" often results in the best experience.
I guess my issue is with an industry and an art form that could and should be built around interactivity choosing to impose too MANY constraints on players. We do that routinely - i.e., limit player choices to which weapon to use... binary choices that are clearly Good or Evil, with little or no consequence associated with the choice... putting players on rails and giving them a "cinematic" experience that has almost nothing to do with player expression or creativity... That's the stuff that drives me mad. And we do it to OURSELVES. Amazing...
As far as "cartoon" imagery goes, you're absolutely right that cartooniness isn't the only viable way of limiting graphical detail to accomplish some greater narrative or gameplay goal - it's just a personal preference of mine. (Given the games I've worked on, most people have no idea how cartoon obsessed I am. But that's probably a subject for another time and place...)
- Warren Spector
