Plot presentation in games (Saturday night with Shibito)
Yesterday someone @rivezico visited my modest refuge in the south-west of St. Petersburg and, eating black grapes on raisins and drinking clean filtered water, snacking on slightly cooled khachapuri, we discussed the latest culturological theories and trends in the world of video games
Specifically, what is life and the influence of the quantum field, the plot in games.
I propose to talk about the presentation of the plot in games without holivar and pulling cotton products. We all know that developers approach this issue in different ways.
I have selected four examples to start with.
Journey - the plot is presented through a visual component (images, changes in the environment over time, player observation) and gameplay. There are no cut-scenes and dialogues in the game. The player controls all the actions of the character throughout the game.
Uncharted - The story is told through cinematic cut-scenes, drakman genius, scripted cutscenes, and character dialogue (within and outside the gameplay). The plot almost does not touch the gameplay (killing 2500 people per hour)
Full Throttle - Play like a book / comic with puzzles. The plot is presented mainly through the text. Dialogues / descriptions.
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Heavy Rain - the gameplay is subject to the plot. The game is like an interactive cut-scene. The player has the opportunity to control the action only at the moments specified in the script. The player chooses the end of the story himself (or is it an illusion of choice).
Just now, Shibito said:
in cinema it is easier to explain - many scenes / episodes are devoid of dialogue at all, but the plot does not go anywhere.
The plot is what moves the story forward, to put it simply.
Just now, DIAL1 said:
The plot is what moves the story forward, to put it simply.
so the question is that history moves forward in different ways
43 minutes ago, SSpace said:
but that the degree of player involvement in the plot largely depends solely on the player himself.
In Lor then already, the plot of the game is to reach a certain boss, a character, kill him, go further. The exposition is the history of the conflict before the player's participation (the initial cutscene), with the outset - the player's entry into the world, the culmination is the final boss and the post-position is the final cutscene.
In games, unlike movies, there are a lot of levers for the ability to move the plot, this is a plus.
7 minutes ago, Arystan said:
In Lor then already, the plot of the game is to reach a certain boss, character, kill him, go further
In the souls, yes, perhaps. In BB I disagree, there the role, the final and intermediate goals of the protagonist is presented very vaguely, no Vaati will help. Herman even grins at the beginning of the game, like - You don't strain too much, go better kill a couple of monsters than hammer your head with all sorts of nonsense 
MattHazard Pururin, I also think Ghost Trick is awesome, the gameplay is not separated from the plot in any way. Also worth mentioning are games from Fumito Ueda. In Ico, in Last Guardian, heroes cannot talk to each other, and their interactions throughout the game are the plot. Last year's Inside is generally outrageous, before the end of this game would have been in the form of a final video, but now it is a full-fledged ending that not only emotionally, but also gameplay stands out.
10 minutes ago, SSpace said:
In BB I disagree, there the role, the final and intermediate goals of the protagonist is presented very vaguely
And for the plot, it doesn't matter how they are presented. The BB follows the main plot structure like the souls, in fact, we move point by point. With drunkenness in the form of Herman's betrayal. Everything else is ENT, filling.
In the same BB. There are several of these engines to a certain point - went and killed the cleric (bought the key) - got to Amelia, or (and) went down to Old Yarnam, killed Bloodstarwd (opened the closed door) - got to Amelia. The whole plot of the game is based on the player's conflict with the outside world.
Just now, Arystan said:
BB follows the main plot structure just like the souls
Yes, but the context is different. Chuzen Undead Ashn One is literally an empty place, a player's avatar, ring the bell, defeat the invincible, in the end accept the inevitable or put it aside for later, the world is still moving on without your participation. And the Hunter has an established background (albeit extremely simple), a more complex motivation and a different, depending on the ending, role in the game world after the credits. I do not equate the latter with any figure of the level of Captain Shepard, for example, but this difference in the character controlled by the player, for me personally, quite strongly affects the perception of the plot.
On 09/04/2017 at 14:43, Arystan said:
ACE It's expensive to make talking heads and staged cutscenes
Not expensive. Won ninja theory made for three pennies a game with the best game and facial animation. It takes several people for this, not a headquarters of a hundred people. Calculate the salary of a team of several actors, a screenwriter and a director, and then compare it with a staff of hundreds of artists, programmers and 3D fashion designers
On 09/04/2017 at 13:59, Shibito said:
Specifically, what is life and the influence of the quantum field, the plot in games.
fixed, bro
Thanks to Celeste, I remembered one technique that developers rarely use but aptly to draw the player's attention at an important or other key moment to the dialogue.
Let's say we have an established scheme for presenting the story in the game itself, for example Celestia these are dialogues with mocked voices like "mimimi" with different intonations, when the real words that they mean are written in the text. And so you think that it will always be that way, or maybe everything was so for you until you dug deeper.
Everything, the moment itself, the character itself, they will never again be perceived as it was before.
Immediately after that, I remembered that Supergigant had been using a similar feature for a long time in their Bastion and Transistor.
When it seems like the whole game is played by one voice and then clap, one single dialogue
Well, Red in the transistor drops his "Hey" at the end. And after all, it seems like a bunch of characters from other games can chat incessantly at least the whole game, but only such moments made them real.