Starting the Project

Well according to the pitch we made, this semesters project is "An exploration of storytelling through a game". This means we are going to look at which ways are effectively used for storytelling in games, and some ways that generally don't go so well. For me a huge part of making a good game is whether or not it has a good story. A lot of modern games tend to focus on gimmicks or fast paced, adrenaline pumped action, with very little contextual details actually explored in the game environment but instead a bunch of pointless missions to make your way to a certain area and kill some major character. DULL.

Our exploration is to look at how storytelling in games is important not only in the content of the story that makes it so good, but also in the way that it is told. In turn with out game we plan to explore different methods of telling certain parts of the story to explore the methods used and find their strengths and weaknesses, but also create a story that is enjoyable to discover and play through. Lucy is in charge of story writing but we have brainstormed a few ideas already and decided on the setting that we would like to have the game in being a winter wasteland. A cold, harsh environment that causes hardship and strife amongst the hardened inhabitants.

We have brainstormed a few ideas of what we want the story to be like, and there seem to be a number of very different ideas on what we want to see in the game. Everyone is putting forward ideas and we are all probably going to have to make some compromises to put a final story together.

We've started looking into a bunch of Indie games that have been made previously that explore new and innovative ways of both playing the game but also telling a story. We chose indie games because I feel they are often the games that test the boundaries more than your average commercial game company does, because they have more freedom in a sense than other companies. On the list of Indie games that we have looked at, these titles have really interested me specifically.

The main game that interested me was Bastion. Bastion is a fantastic adventure about a boy that wakes up after a terrible calamity ravages his world. This game immediately stood out to me with the fantastic narration that progresses the story in the game so very well,  below is a video of the introduction to the game to give you some form of idea about what I mean.

The use of narrative is driven in a way by the actions the character takes but also is informative in the sense that it provides hints and clues as to where the player needs to go, but also creates background to the world for example when the kid finds a memento from a girl he used to fancy. Normally the player wouldn't have known this fact from just finding a collectable, but the narrator adds that extra layer of depth which is really fantastic. I would really like to have something similar done with the game that we create to really strengthen the story.