How Games Tell Their Stories
Cutscenes
Games have many ways to tell you their stories. Most RPGs and narrative games open with a cutscene to introduce the inciting incident and give some background.
Dragon Age Origins opens with the history of the darkspawn and the Blight. Fallout games open by telling us about the bombs and how people survived in the Vaults. Players need context, especially in the first game of a series.
Some opening cutscenes are better than others, of course. If you don’t give the player enough information, it can be hard to get them to care about the main storyline. Equally, too much exposition can get boring and tedious. As much as I love Fallout New Vegas, I think the opening cutscenes give us too much information about the NCR and the Legion.
We could learn this in the early game, to my mind. We meet NCR soldiers in Primm, and could easily get a bit of detail about the NCR from talking to them. When we reach Nipton and talk to Vulpes Inculta, we could get a brief rundown of who the Legion are. This would be more impactful, since we would just see a bunch of Roman cosplayers coming out of the town hall. But we were told about them before, so it’s less of a surprise.
It was a bold choice for Benny to shoot you in the head at the beginning of the game. It’s unexpected, because it would be a very short game indeed if this was fatal. Skyrim does something similar with a dragon saving the protagonist from execution.
Dialogue
Like novels, movies and plays, dialogue is a huge part of storytelling in games. Pretty much every RPG that has ever existed requires you to find information by talking to every NPC you can find. A lot of this dialogue is for flavour, which improves immersion, but you will find secrets and important details through this method in most RPGs.
An example from Fallout New Vegas is Rotface. He’s a ghoul you will find in Freeside, easily overlooked. However, if you pay him one bottlecap (the currency of Fallout) he will give you a random tip or some gossip. He has hints which aid the player in certain side quests. For example, the NCR send the player to assassinate a man called Pacer.
Pacer is The King’s second in command, the gang who run Freeside, and is problematic for the NCR. Rotface will tell you that Pacer uses Jet but has a heart condition. Getting this tip allows you to spike Pacer’s Jet stash with another drug, Psycho, which will kill him. No-one will know who did the deed, it’s a proper sneaky way to assassinate someone.
A lot of RPGs have the option to speak to important characters and ask questions. These dialogue trees can be very involved and you will learn a lot about the world and the characters. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are both great for this. The party camp or the Normandy is a place to regroup and you can go around and chat to your companions. You get to know them, their opinions on your choices and alter their disposition towards you. You can even initiate romance with some of them!
Games Tell Their Stories
These are the more direct ways games tell their stories. They are effective for the most part, but a balance needs to be found. If you don’t give enough information, the player will lose interest. However, it’s possible to overdo it and a massive exposition dump can turn the player off too.
Next time we’ll talk about the less direct methods, such as collecting lore and environmental storytelling. What do you think about cutscenes in games? Do you have a favourite? Or is there one you dislike? Let me know in the comments!
Discover more from Emma Stewart Writes
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.