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How Do You Judge A "Story"?
cameltosis
Member LegendaryPosts: 3,847
Long time readers will know that I tend to overthink everything, and also that I do not enjoy story in my games. I thought it might be interesting to explain how I judge stories in general, regardless of the medium, and to invite you to share how you judge a story and explain what is important to you.
1) Plot
This is like the overall summary of the story: what's it all about? Think of this like a one-page or one-paragraph summary of the story. What is the core essence, and does it make me excited to find out more details? Do I really care? For example, the plot to LotR might be something like:
"An unsuspecting halfling comes into possession of a powerful magical ring tied to the spirit of an evil sorcerer. Forced to flee his home, he must travel across the lands of middle earth, escaping the minions of the evil sorcerer, seeking the aid of the goodly races of the world and trying to figure out how to end the threat of Sauron. Through dungeons deep and caverns old, surviving attacks and avoiding battles, Frodo and his companion eventually make it to Mount Doom where they have a chance to destroy the magical ring and kill the spirit of Sauron. Will he have the strength to do what needs to be done?"
Plot is very much about a high-level perspective, a chance to see whether its the sort of thing we'd like to engage with.
2) Action Points
I don't really know what to call this, but I think of "action points" as the bits of action that advance the plot. Frodo sold his house and walked from Hobbitton to Crickhollow, having his first encounters with the Nazgul. Aragorn fighting off the Nazgul on Weathertop etc.
When I'm looking at the various action points, I'm asking myself "is this really advancing the plot?" "what is it adding to the story?". I'm also looking at whether the action points are themselves interesting. For example, in the LotR books, there is a chapter on the glittering caves behind helms deep. The descriptions are excellent, but it does nothing to advance the plot which is why it was left out of the movies.
3) Drama
Stories only become meaningful when we form some sort of emotional attachment to the characters. If we have no emotional attachment then the story holds no value for us and is quickly dismissed. So, when I say "Drama", I'm really talking about everything that is designed to increase our emotional involvement with the story. It may be a discussion between characters, or an internal monologue of a characters thoguhts. It may be facial expressions or other body language coming off an actor that lets us know what they're thinking.
4) Consistency
I hesitated to add this category as its not necessarily something I notice with a lot of stories, but when a story isn't internally consistent it becomes very obvious and can cause a lot of harm. As an example, I read a lot of fantasy books where sword fighting is common and the best swordsmen have usually spent years being trained by the best instructors, plus they have field experience. But, then someone will come along, get 2 weeks of instruction whilst on the mission, and all of a sudden they're amazing fighters. That sort of thing immediately lowers the credibility of the character and makes engagement with the remaining story more difficult for me.
5) Presentation
This is really all about the mechanical parts of telling a story. Has the author chosen good words to tell their story? Are the paragraphs properly spaced and sized? Is the pacing good? Are the camera angles showing the right things at the right time? Has the director over-used shakey-cam? In games, I'd be looking at use of voice acting, quality of text, animation of characters etc.
You can have the best story in the world, but if you present it badly then it just wont work. Likewise, you can have a fairly substandard story, but if you present it really well then it can work for a large amount of people (here's looking at you, Avatar!). When you see films described as a "visual spectacle", this is usually what they mean - it has a crap plot and crap drama, but its action points have been well presented, so its fun to watch anyway.
Anyways, thats a little insight into how I evaluate stories. I'm really curious to know what you think and how you judge a story yourself. Are there elements of a story that are more important to you than others? Do you have different priorities depending on the medium? For example, you might prioritize action points and presentation when watching a film, but prioritize drama in a book. Let me know!
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Comments
Take Fallout 4 for instance, the entire premise of the logic for the story is flawed.
The Institute kidnaps the sole survivor's son from the vault because they need the "pure" non-radioactive DNA to build artificial intelligence machines which they will call "human". Well, when Fallout 4 came out, humans could clone a sheep, and Bethesda could clone a Fallout game. Actual science is not Bethesda's strength.
Now I could see the use of the DNA to add to the birthing pool of post apocalyptic humans in an effort to offset a radiation damaged gene pool, but seriously, kidnaping people to experiment on them with a serum that continually fails and creates Supermutants? The definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The serum part of the story is an example of stupidity, both on the part of the Institute, and the game designers. Logic indicates that the supply of Supermutants should be limited until they become extinct. Ever see a female Supermutant give birth?
Similarly, the Railroad faction is all about, "Would you give up your life for a toaster?" To which the player responds, "No, I just want to get the kevlar mini-skirt for my female avatar." The entire premise of the Railroad is flawed. Why is a mechanical being considered human? Wouldn't Desmoda rather promote birth?
Anyway, Fallout 4 is really a first person shooter masquerading as an RPG, so the story is really irrelevant. Just go out and shoot things up so Bethesda can cash in.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Simple as those two concepts are, it's amazing how many games totally screw that up.
After that, developing and concluding the stories depends a lot on how the game play is structured
It's very easy in linear games to lead the player by the hand and tell the story almost exactly how a movie tells it with everything in its proper sequence and leading to the next part of the story.
It's very different in more open world games and the stories can become a confusing, jumbled mess unless great care is taken to make side stories relate clearly to the main plot.
An example of an open world RPG that does this well is The Witcher 3. You may be somewhat lost in the finer details of the long and intricate Bloody Baron's family side quest line, but the main arc about finding Ciri is never lost and you know that you're involved with the Baron in pursuit of clues to follow about the main plot.
An example of one done badly is Elder Scrolls Online. Originally the plot was very tight and despite having open zones they did do a good job of telling the Molag Baal story arch as well as the 3-sided battle in Cyrodiil and tying both plots together into one. The zones were level locked so it was inevitable that you would experience the story in the proper order to its conclusion.
But then they started adding content and zones that weren't even in the same time line as the main plot or even followed logically after that original timeline. They then launched the One Tamriel game rework with level scaling everywhere and this allowed players to experience the content in any order they want to. Then it wasn't just a matter of competing story lines and timelines, the original fairly tight plot and story arch became something you had to research (google) outside the game to even know where you should go next if you wanted to experience it as originally intended.
They compounded the problem by insisting that new players (assuming they bought the whole game package as of their date of entry) start with a tutorial in the latest Chapter zone and go from there. There are several good stories to follow in the game but with no in-game system to let the players know where they should start and where to go after that for any of them.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1. It's fun to read/play/watch
2. I want the story to continue
A plotline that gets revealed from time to time, where players can affect it by their actions, etc.
I mean, there should always be some demonic force (or something similar) that wants to take over or destroy the player's world. And player's should be able to seek out the mysteries and secrets of the evil by discovering clues.
But not through a silly, everyone does it quest system. It should be Naturally, in live game play.
Once upon a time....
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's not too late! You can still get help for that!
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I care about the character, the character cares about the story, only then I'd care about the story. If a character is unlikable, then I can't like the story, I can't get involved because I don't care about the character. The characters drive the story, push the plot forward, make you emotional, or make you regret reading the story in the first place. So first and foremost judgment falls upon the characters.
How to judge them? What is the most important part of the character, who drives the story? Well, what drives the character. The character's motivation is what matters the most. Everything else, the obstacles, the conflicts, the drama, the setting, the theme, the context, it is all related to the character's motivation. If not, then they would be useless elements. When the setting correlates to the character's motives, then you'd enjoy the setting. When they don't, you won't. So does everything else.
How would you know they had the right motivation? The ending. The conclusion. All that driving led to where. Motivation is merely a force to get you somewhere. If that's a stupid place, if that's a silly destination, if by the end you'd realize you really don't care about the place to be, then it meant the motivation was a lie, it was false, it was stupid, so the character was stupid, so the story was story, so the author was stupid, and you are stupider than everyone else involved for reading through 300-something pages.
TLDR:
How to judge a story? Judge its characters.
How to judge the characters? Judge their motivations.
How to judge their motivations? Judge the conclusion.
That's a big problem in MMORPGs, that nothing really means anything besides XP and loot.
Now, lets say there's an NPC village that's a prime source of something needed to make Heal Potions, and if they are killed you have to go farther and pay more for that ingredient. Then if they're threatened you'll (players) care.
Once upon a time....
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that story seems to have become an irrelevance in MMOs though some solo games still use it well.
As for what Dibdabs says, I agree if you are only looking at the gaming genre, story is just over used plots and flip flopping characterisation used to explain the next dlc or title in the franchise. But it does not have to be like that, if story came first yet it seems the way many studios work it comes last.
Does anyone remember when "Blizzard" was talking about how the latest expansion (back then) to WoW was made? We found out the basic ideas were cooked up by executives, the graphics department did some rough work and then they told to the story guys to work it out as a story. After they were called out on this they issued press releases about how they were in contact with the story team all the time, utter rubbish we had learnt the truth, they have no regard for the story at all. That is the norm for MMOs now it is only in some solo games we see story conceptualizing a game and the gameplay being built aroound that.
I think Everquest has fabulous lore. It does not really have a story you can be in but the world is there all around you and you can find out how the world came to be and what the world is now by exploring. The depth of the lore is felt profoundly by doing the content and coming across the remnants of the world and the NPCs. It must be well written and above all be something I want to care about.
I am also very forgiving of the medium if it is not a book I am reading or a movie I am watching. I enjoyed SWTOR for its great stories.
The fact is I am easily entertained so I can get involved in a game if the world has a lot of rich story about how it came to be and by doing quests I am then allowed to partake in the world and that story . FFXIV is a great example of this. This has limits if you make alts and are forced to go through the same route the former character took but unfortunately that is the fault of making alts. If I had only played one character the world and the game would have succeeded in entertaining me completely. MMORPGs however cannot be played this way because part of the enjoyment comes from playing different classes.
I am fortunate in that I enjoy playing in a world where I can be involved and I read every scrap of writing and look around me as I play. In Everquest 2 the game I am currently playing each dungeon I explore I look around at everything and search for what the stories mean. I even check online to further my appreciation of the lore. Much of Everquest 2 lore is strewn all over the world and is hard to put together and the sheer volume will overwhelm even those of us with good memories and I have a bad one.
The problem is that expansions ruin the continuity and often destroy some good cohesion. You cannot really enjoy that part of it because some don't even make any sense with reference to what came before. That is the horrible part of MMORPGs and stories.
In Everquest 2 I have solved this by playing very slowly and have not actually gotten to the expansions that began to destroy the world building. I am sure I will quit the game at that point. Well nothing good ever lasts.
FOr me, I think that its just that I dont relate to pixels....if I am watching a movie or TV show, then I can feel the emotions and passions of the people involved....In a video game I just don't feel that. I guess you could compare video games more to a book, but they just are not in the same category....There are very few games where I have ever read any of the quests or lore and none of them have stuck with me like a good book would.
A story that has character that I enjoy, and that's a broad spectrum. It can be moved emotionally, that I absolutely cant put the book down until I know what's happened next. Or the side characters, sometimes main, who entertain me with the way they are written, their foibles, the way the react, how they think.
A good plot can be killed by unlikable characters, but enjoyable characters can gloss over some plot holes, and still make a story reasonably entertaining, at least for me.
This is why I admit I struggle some with story in games, especially in MMORPG's. Sandboxes made me the protagonist (I'm thinking SWG, not EVE, because I think in EVE the narrative is always about the universe, and most often about whatever war is going on at the time.), but too many games where you are the "one" person saving the world...eh....
Single player games have it easier in that respect, the First Dragon Age, I'll admit I liked Cyberpunk (Despite the bugs, I liked the way the story was told, even if it was too short.)
Recently I stumbled into, I guess an MMORPG, that made me recall how I enjoyed being a part of something. Who didn't love early SWG, when you pulled together with your guild to build a city? Everyone out scouting the best spots to get materials, to supplying the group what they needed so they could contribute. I probably have more fond memories of times spent in games like that, where we wrote the story, as opposed as going to "Molten Core for the 50th time....."
So boiling it down, in games with other people, I enjoy being part of an ongoing narrative that we write. In single player games, give me characters, or a world that I want to explore, and be held captive to. In books and film, give me characters that I enjoy, and I don't want to say I always am emotionally invested in, but anyone or anything that has interest for me.
Good post, good question....definitely fun to consider.
The problem with SP quests, replayed for each player character, is that it's obviously a "just a game" element.
And that instantly removes any emotional ties to it, because it's your own personal 4th wall content, removed from the game world, and "just a game." A SP game, meaningless to anyone else, and so it's got almost no meaning to you.
If I play in my own Super Bowl and win because it's made just for me, who else would care? Why would I care then?
(And it certainly wouldn't be on TV, lol.)
Once upon a time....
The same is true for stories in all other media. Some reread the same books, go to performances of the same play time and again, tune-in to reruns of their favourite shows, etc. Replaying the stories you enjoy in a game is no different.
Wait....they do.
But that is a different point than I was making.
What I was saying is that even going through the content the first time, it lacks meaning as "your story" because everyone else runs through the same story. Or in some cases, some stories, it's based on class, so it's not "everyone." Just all those in the same class.
But your point does fit on those rare "quests" that are done exceptionally well. How often don't you wish you could go do that one again?
But those are very rare cases.
And worse, if you have one of those great memories, you have to create a new tune to run it again, because your other character has levelled past it that it just doesn't work.
"End Game" seems to have some of those rare cases because of the effort they put into making that content.
How long before that gets old too, and everyone is waiting for new content to come out?
Once upon a time....