Storytelling in Games – IGN Article
May 30th, 2011Just a quick little post: IGN have just posted an article about storytelling in games where they’ve interviewed a whole load of top games’ developers from around the world. It’s worth a read at:
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/115/1159020p1.html
There are second and third parts to come for this series too.
The Dragon Age Quest pt.7: Awakening
March 28th, 2011
I wouldn’t say Awakening wasn’t good for the first seven hours, but it’s not been anything to blog home about. A bit of the same old same old. But, now, I have three small instances worthy of committing to the internet, all displaying BioWare’s penchant for creating stories that feel personal to the player, and compelling either because they arise from decisions the player has made, or because they force the player to consider interesting dilemmas.
The first involved a grey warden named Keenan, who I found down a lonely tunnel in a Darkspawn-invested mine. His legs had been crushed by a Darkspawn general and he was close to death. When I came upon him he disclosed to me his dying wishes; firstly that I would avenge him by killing the general, secondly that I would return his wedding ring, which had been stolen by the general, to his wife, Nida, back in Amaranthine and tell her news of his demise. Following this exchange he promptly died.
Well I went away and killed this general, bagging myself a large maul with the name ‘Leg Crusher’ for my trouble, took care of my unfinished business in the mine, then toddled off to Amaranthine to find Nida. This is where the little sub-story got interesting: I found Nida in the city’s tavern with another man. When I asked to speak with her about her husband, she requested that the other man leave, calling him ‘sweetheart’ as he departed.
I handed her the wedding ring, signifying her husband’s death. A fleeting sadness passed over her face and then, well, I probably should have noted this down, but the conversation went something along the lines that she was angry that her husband had disappeared to join the grey wardens and then gotten himself killed. I responded that everyone had to make sacrifices, to which she responded that he should not have been so willing to do so when it meant leaving her behind, especially when she had had no say in the matter.
Xbox Live Indie Games: Decay pt.1
February 9th, 2011
Xbox Live Indie Games are like those cheap exploitation horror films I love so much: most of them are terribly executed, based around a ridiculous idea, unashamedly appropriate popular concepts from current trends, or all three, and end up being either tragic, or tragically hilarious. But for every hundred Zombie Apocalypse or Carnival of Souls there’s one Satan’s Little Helper. And so, nestled in amongst the ‘Massage Simulators’ and the ‘Zombie Techno Paintball – now with avatar supports’ of the XBLIG world, there is Decay, a sombrely understated point-and-click adventure game, straight from the mid-nineties.
I must admit, I’m not that familiar with the genre, primarily because it’s been steadily in decline since its peak fifteen years ago, but I did used to play Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland on my dad’s Windows 95 PC back in the day, so I’m not entirely new to the concept. Perhaps you are though, so for anyone who had no idea what a point-and-click adventure game is, it’s a game where you point at something, then you click. But instead of, say, bullets coming out where you’ve clicked and killing something, you passively examine whatever your cursor has pointed to and consider the actions you could take regarding this particular object. It’s quite a sedate, often cerebral affair.
