Last week I wrote about how hollow choices that don’t impact the plot in games can cause the player to feel disconnected from the story and critically break the immersion. I called this phenomenon The Illusion of Choice and talked about how it happens and how it happens and possible ways to avoid it. Going through last week’s post later on I had a realization: I had subtitled it “Games Aren’t About You” and never elaborated as to what that means or who the games are actually about. Not to mention I boiled down the issue of unfulfilling storytelling to “Writing is hard and designing games is complex.” Clearly I didn’t really do the topic justice That was because I had so much more to say on the topic that I simply forgot because I ran out of room. I guess it’s only appropriate I make a part two about why it’s so easy for gaming narratives to drop the ball.
So let’s pick things up from a simple point I made last week; writing fiction is hard. Easier for some more than others, sure. But, it takes one look at R.R. Martin who has struggled to write the next Game of Thrones book for over a decade now to see that yeah, sometimes it does require quite a bit of effort to make all the dots connect. A natural question that follows is, if it’s so hard, they why even do it? Well that’s easy, to get famous quickly and make fat stacks of cash share a tale you feel is worth sharing (not that the chance of getting rich isn’t in the back of your mind). I mean, think about it, why are we so prone to gossip at the water cooler or tell our friends about all the misadventures we’ve had during our vacation? Because we all enjoy listing to others lived experiences and because it also feels nice for the storyteller for their story to be enjoyed. So, in essence we write a story, we do it because we feel that it’s a worthwhile story to tell.
Now when authors write their stories, there is always some kind of intent, something specific they want to convey that causes them to take up writing. That thing could be almost anything:, it could be a kind of moral that is conveyed over the course of the story, it could be awesome and well-choreographed action scenes that are pleasant to watch, it could be well-timed comedic moments that make the audience laugh, or several different things combined in one package. What that is depends on the author, and often serves as the central focal point for how they structure their writing. As long as this intent is properly conceptualized and developed, the fictional piece tends to succeed in its purpose and can be enjoyed despite other shortcomings. However, an interesting conflict emerges when a player’s will is introduced into the narrative as a function of the nature of interactive storytelling. Because sometimes the player’s intent will wind up clashing with the intent of the author.
To illustrate how this happens I will use another form of interactive storytelling: Role-playing; and in this case I will use D&D as it is the system I am most familiar with. For those of you that aren’t familiar with D&D, it is… Actually I will defer to the explanation listed on the official D&D page on the Wizard’s of the coast website:
The core of D&D is storytelling. You and your friends tell a story together, guiding your heroes through quests for treasure, battles with deadly foes, daring rescues, courtly intrigue, and much more. You can also explore the world of Dungeons & Dragons through any of the novels written by its fantasy authors, as well as engaging board games and immersive video games. All of these stories are part of D&D.
Dungeons and Dragons is a game all about telling stories, becoming a character, and having fun with your friends. It’s set in a fantasy world of swords and sorcery, but whether you want to join a pirate gang, explore a jungle, or take part in a political plot is entirely up to you. Everything is your decision, from what you look like, to how you act, to what happens next. The dice just help you along. Most of all though, it’s about spending time with your nearest and dearest, sharing dwarven ales, and making memories.
https://dnd.wizards.com/what-is-dnd
To summarize it, D&D is a system where players make a character of their choosing, the Dungeon Master(DM) who acts as the storyteller gives them some kind of goal, and the players are free to use any means at their disposal to accomplish that goal, or to go off and do their own thing. The world is their oyster and the fact that it’s a magical world provides a nigh limitless number of them. That sounds great! And it is great, at least in cases where the DM and the players can get on the same page. Because when there not… things fall apart pretty quickly.
Now I will have to confess that I’ve never actually played the roll as the DM, I’m set to do so after our group finishes our current campaign, but for now I’ll have to draw from looking from side and watching the troubles of my friend Tyler who usually acts as the DM. So Tyler really likes to make interesting and multi-layered combat encounters that provide a kind of grand spectacle. I can relate to this style as I feel I would do the same. But what if the players have other ideas?
So imagine if you set up this grand battle against a nemesis that’s been hiding in plain sight, secretly observing the party from the sidelines…. aaand one of the players realizes in advance, stabs the bad guy out of the blue when he doesn’t expect it and kills the enemy before the final encounter…. oops. Let’s try that again… This time the villain won’t leave his castle and issue commands from safely from afar. Nothing will interrupt the battle this time! A bit of monologue and some banter first can’t hurt… aaand then a character specializing in persuasion successfully rolls high in arguing against the villain’s ideas and dissuades him from continuing his evil plans. There goes your 3-phase boss fight. Ok, ok I’ll get this right this time. Now I will… wait what do you mean you’d rather raise a bird farm and assemble a flying boat than continue the plot?
Now I haven’t actually experienced most of these events in my campaigns (though a couple of party members did start a bird farm in the basement one time), but they are examples of some very real scenarios that a D&D gaming session might come across. And they represent a very real conundrum for the DM, they might want to set up a really cool battle scene or a political drama or a sneaking mission or whatever, but if the players have their own idea of how things should go or do something unexpected like kill a story critical NPC (happens way too often), the DM can be put in an awkward position of having to improvise or rewrite a portion of the planned story. And at worst if the party isn’t vibing with the kind of game the DM wants to hold, it might lead to the dissolution of the whole group. Because of the interactive nature of the game the storyteller is often at odds with the players and has to reconcile the difference in intent in order for the experience to proceed smoothly.
A situation that accurately describes how savvy players can completely wreck a narrative actually does exist in the realm of gaming; in an old and buggy game called Two Worlds. In the game, the main villain appears at the start, outside the first village you encounter. You’re supposed to talk to him without knowing he’s evil. If you try and fight him, he will likely kill you. However, he is not immortal, and if you attack him enough to get him to chase you to the village nearby, his attacks will hit the villagers. Because the villagers ARE immortal they will actually kill him, and since the win condition for the game is to kill him the game ends on the spot, as little as 2 minutes into the game. Definitely not what the story writers intended, but an accurate portrayal of how players can spontaneously alter the story to their whims.
This leads me to the crux of the problem in how interactive storytelling causes a clash between the author and the player. The writer wants to tell a story for a specific reason and expects the audience to understand and accept the writer’s intent. This doesn’t always happen as not everyone will approve of the author’s intent. So for non-interactive stories the reader has to either accept the story for what it is or put it down. After all the story isn’t about the audience or what they want, it’s about realizing the author’s intent(Finally I explain this point). But in the case of interactive narratives, a third option emerges: rebel.
A couple of years ago a highly desired game came out during the zenith of the COVID pandemic. It was a sequel to one of the most critically lauded games of the last decade and there was a great amount of attention around its release. That game was The Last of Us 2. While it gained near universal praise from critics, amongst the general player-base it proved to be one of the most divisive games of all time.
I will withhold my own opinions of the game, especially so as I haven’t myself played it, but it does provide a relevant case study in how video game players will rebel against the game. To set the stage(some spoilers ahead) for half the game you play as girl named Ellie, pursuing another girl named Abby. Then at the halfway point you switch over to playing Abby, replaying the past few days and culminating in a fight between the two leads while controlling Abby. Ellie has a gun and Abby is bare handed, needing to sneak around to get the drop on Ellie. It is this fight that I want to focus on.
If you were to measure the general response of players towards the two leads, it becomes immediately obvious that Ellie is significantly more respected than Abby is. So if you were to ask the audience who they’d rather win at that point in the story, most people would reply Ellie. Yet you have to control Abby, and you would win the fight while controlling Abby. The story expects Abby to win and requires her to win both to keep the intended flow of events consistent and to further the moral it is trying to deliver. And yet most people would rather Abby lose. So what did players do in this situation? Because of the sheer number of people who streamed the game on release we actually have a concrete answer. Many players chose to forgo sneaking around, stood out in the open, and let the AI-controlled Ellie shoot the player-controlled Abby to death. The players rebelled against the intents of the authors actively choosing to let their character die in a vain attempt to change the course of the narrative. And were disappointed when that didn’t work.
There are multiple reasons why people didn’t like TLoU2, some valid some less so. So having the ability to choose which character wins certainly wouldn’t single-handedly change everyone’s opinion of the game. But it is a moment where one can reasonably expect there to be some kind of a choice, a narrative split. You’ve controlled both characters, so in a conflict between the two surely you can pick a favorite? No you can’t. The story requires a specific winner. And if you feel like you’ve been cheated out of that choice you notice that author acts as the puppet-master, pulling strings to make the story go the way they intend and that no matter how much you pull the strings the other way, you cannot escape them. And there is nothing more immersion breaking than to realize that you are a puppet dancing on someone’s strings and that your control over the game is but an illusion. That is the Illusion of Choice
Once again I cannot provide a good all-encompassing solution. The author and audience are fated to clash and it is the testament of a good author to be able to resolve that conflict in advance. I do however like to end things on a good note, in this case providing an example how even an incorrect choice can feel rewarding. And once again I want to use my favorite Visual Novel: Fate/Stay Night.
In F/SN, the final Heaven’s Feel arc, there is a moment where, if you’ve properly had positive conversations with a character, they will show up to handle fighting a major enemy guarding the area of the story’s climax. If you’ve done a poor job and the ally doesn’t show up, the main character has to fight the guard himself, ending in a virtual draw as the protagonist is incapacitated and resulting in a fail state. But even though this technically results in a loss, the fight itself is regarded as one of the best in the game making it a fan favorite. Imagine that, a wrong choice that still rewards the player.
Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here for potential game writers: that in spite of your intent for the game and for the story to go, you have to account for the player wanting to do the opposite. And while you don’t always need to allow the player a hundred different ways to succeed, you can still cover your bases by giving them something extra for failure. Because while authors and players might clash at times, as long as players feel rewarded for trying their own thing, they won’t feel slighted for not always being in control.
