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…
Tag: storytelling
Storytelling Without Words
Storytelling Without Words Some games don’t use text or dialogue to tell you the story. Games can achieve storytelling without words. There’s a game called Virginia, which tells a story with no dialogue. It involves an FBI investigation in a small town in Virginia, and there is no spoken dialogue at all. You have to…
Visual Novels as Games
Some games have little gameplay, such as the ‘walking simulators’ and visual novels which usually take the form of ‘dating simulators’. They are two different kinds of visual novels and are very popular. Let’s take a look at them in kind. The ‘walking simulators’ are games where you mainly spend your time walking around, exploring…
Storytelling In Gaming
Storytelling In Gaming Let’s talk about storytelling in gaming. A lot of video games tell a story in some fashion. These stories can be extremely simple and linear, or they can be massively long and complex. One of the more important aspects of video game stories is that you, as the player, can ‘choose your…
Environmental Storytelling in Games
Environmental Storytelling Let’s talk about environmental storytelling. This is something unique to visual and interactive media formats. Stories are told by the placement of certain items in the world. There’s no dialogue or written notes telling you what happened. For example, in Concord in Fallout 4 you can hack your way into the vault of…
Choose Your Own Adventure
Options: Choose Your Own Adventure Some narrative games have one single storyline for you to follow. Sometimes, these games are referred to as ‘walking simulators’, where you wander the game world and experience the story. Maybe there are some light puzzles to solve to find your way through. These types of game are good for…
Fallout On Prime: Did They Retcon Fallout New Vegas?
Fallout has been out for a while now, therefore it’s long past time for me to share my thoughts. Did Bethesda retcon Fallout New Vegas? I’ll be answering this question with my thoughts. This is a general review of the series and a discussion of the “retcon” of Fallout New Vegas and controversy among certain…
Fallout Review: Episode One – The End
Beginning at the End – Setting the Scene Welcome to my in-depth review of Episode One of Fallout. The first episode of Fallout on Prime has a lot of heavy lifting to do. Obviously a lot of the audience will be fans of the game, that’s a given. However, there’s going to be a lot…
Indirect Storytelling In Games
Lore And Codex Entries One method of indirect storytelling in games involves finding bits of lore in the world. Examples include notes or voice recordings. Books, journals and emails on computers as well. This lore is not essential to the story, only giving background and additional details. This makes the world seem more real and…
Storytelling in Gaming – Introduction
The Three-Act Structure I’m starting a new series of posts about storytelling in gaming. A lot of RPG plots follow the classic three-act structure of storytelling. This is for a good reason, as the structure is a common way to build and pace a story, regardless of the format it will be published in. Additionally,…