Well, the problem with this is that the story of the game has to be given to the player somehow. I see several possible methods of doing this:

1. Having story just happen at the player. This pretty much amounts to cutscenes - which you don't want.

2. Having players trigger story events. This usually amounts to cutscenes too, but there's some interesting turns that could take.

3. Doing neither, and only telling the story through some additive media (like a movie or novel) and just letting the game imply that these events from the other medium are happening. Frankly, I don't like this idea.

To expand on #2: We have this problem that because of the medium, story has to be conveyed in one of three ways: dialogue between characters, viewing events happening around the character (and the character's actions), or hearing/reading the story from a narrator. This goes for movies as well as for theatre, novels, and TV shows.

To avoid the detachment from gameplay during these scenes, you could do a few things:

1. Just don't detach gameplay. If some event is to happen in the story at a certain time, just have it happen. If the character is in the vicinity to see it, they get to see it. If they aren't, they don't. So say that you're supposed to rescue Distress Individual A (we'll call them DIA) from Some Evil Fiend of Darkness (call them SEFOD) who was torturing DIA for the location of some All-Mighty Enchanted Crystal (AMEC). So you go off to SEFOD's castle and you slay SEFOD and find DIA's holding cell and release them. They then run off home and tell their town mayor how wonderful you are for saving them. In their discussion, DIA talks about where the AMEC is located. You need the AMEC to defeat the local Big Bad, so you want to know where it is. Now usually, this would end up being a cutscene once you arrived back at DIA's home town. Instead, this could be a scene that is scheduled to happen within several game minutes after DIA's return to town. So if you don't hightail it back from SEFOD's castle to that town and make it to the mayor's office by the time DIA gets back and starts talking about it, you just don't see the event. And even when you're there, there's nothing holding you there to listen. You could run around and slay the furniture while they talk, or you could ransack the place and end up leaving before the mayor ever says anything about where the AMEC is.

This tactic can work, but requires a strong autonomy of the NPCs since never losing player interaction means that the player character wouldn't be speaking to too many people since the player could just choose to run out. It also means that you would lose a lot of the dramatism since events can be so easily missed. It seems kinda like the way MMORPGs play out their events, though I avoid MMORPGs for fear of addiction.

2. Force the gameplay to move you to see certain events and the player is always the one advancing the story. Here you can have player actions covertly trigger scenes (eg: entering a room causes two NPCs to converse, but you don't have to watch). The problem here is that the story becomes so tightly integrated into the game play that without having the player initiate conversations with NPCs, you end up with very contrived situations marking the progression of the story. For instance, pretend that NPC B hates Player A; to explain why entirely through gameplay, you'd have to have something like a scenario where Player A goes and kidnaps NPC B's pet turtle. If there's no scenes to tell you to do this, all you get is some in-game prompt saying "kidnap the turtle to proceed" and the player has no particularly compelling reason to care, and unless you get caught, you have no way to see how NPC B reacts to this and comes to hate you for it.

In order for a story to be emotional, you need the characters to have motivations, and explanations for their feelings, or at least a way to convey them. If you want the player to hate the Evil Emperor because they decimated the country Elbonia, having it be something that the player hears about isn't nearly as impactful as having a cutscene of Elbonia exploding and all of its citizens being killed.

And without forcing cutscenes and dialogue to progress the story, then you have no way of making the player know what's going on in a way that is impactful to them. They can choose to know, but they can also choose not to. And while that may be their loss, it's also a matter of making sure that the player knows where to go to view these things...

Anyway, I just rambled a lot and possibly made no point, or said things the way I didn't want to, but I have to go to class now, so I'll leave it as is and see what comes up.

-Auron

Quote:

Original post by Oluseyi You'll need a better example to substantiate your argument.

Ok, what about silent movies then? (had that originally but edited out to leave just a more "recent" example) Yeah I know they had text panels too, but still the majority of story is told through action.

Actually I'd be very pleased of a game that'd deliver a story & atmosphere on the level of Ong-Bak, including both the comedy that comes with the ingenious ways the hero sometimes defeats his opponents, and the tragedy & loss involved.

(not to say there aren't games that vastly surpass it)

Have you played Doom3 or F.E.A.R.?
They make very good use of the com system to convey information while your charactor is on the move.
F.E.A.R. even manages to have really well integrated "cut-scenes" like half-life does, where the scene takes place on the charactor with no change in
perspective. Say your charactor gets hit in the head, and draged along for a short ride off to the prison cell(trash compactor) where you then have to escape, it is still technically a "cut-scene" but the integration
keeps it from detracting from gameplay. It is really no diferent than the idea of having the charactors hold/chase you while attempting to tell you something.

Interesting question. Personally I like cutscenes because they function as rewards for the player to earn and feedback showing that the player is succeding as solving levels and advancing the story. So I don't really grok why one would want to avoid them. But the issue is very interesting to me since Xenallure is inching closer to the storyboarding phase where I will have to decide how to convey the story to the player.

I like where Auron was taking the idea of autonomous NPCs. If you could combine that with some freeform dialogue system then you could make something workable, I feel. Then if the player misses the dialogue between DIA and her daddy, then they can return later and directly ask for that information. Now we're back in the "asking NPCs for information" mode, but since the NPCs are more autonomous than in most games, one would presume that they have daily lives getting carried out. So the mayor would spend most of his day in the office, but he'd move around, go visit his constituents, spend some time with his family, and sleep at night. Programming in daily routines for all the NPCs would be a major pain, but could add immensely to the immersion factor and reduce the "everything in the world revolves around my character" feeling that player-initiated cutscenes have in most games.

I agree with S&S that there's no harm in cutscenes. It may not be gameplay, but how are you going to turn talking to the king about the ArchMaguc of Anarchy into gameplay? Nor do I see anything wrong with talking to NPCs about what's happening in their lives or the town; I'd do the same thing if I was a stranger. I do agree that talking to NPCs is silly when they say things like "I hate my father!" or "There's a legend that a terrible monster lives in the well." because nobody that I know would say that to someone they've never seen before.