Thoughts of a restless brain on the subject of games

Pic not related: I just like it as a poster.

Alright, uh... it's almost 4am and I can't sleep so I thought it would be a perfect time to make a new blog post where I ramble about game ideas. After reading the blog over again earlier I realised we promised to come back to the point of ideas for games and gosh darn it we are nothing if not integrit... intergrous to our fans. Integritous. Well anyway...

I was thinking of a method of story telling that you don't see much in games these days. In fact I don't think I've EVER seen it which isn't to say it doesn't exist... just that it doesn't exist in any mainstream games I've played. You see in most games in this modern day the story is fed to you on a spork while it pats you on the back for w+M1-ing. I'm looking at you Call of Duty and to some extent Mass Effect. Anyway my idea... I want the story to be a result of direct actions taken in the game! I don't mean pulling left or right trigger at a cutscene or quicktime events either. I'm talking 'You bust in a room and some punk ash b!t_ch is holding your ROMANTIC INTEREST hostage so you can either try talking him down or shooting him before he can do anything' and this whole thing will be real time. You fail to do anything and you fail to do anything, she dies. The only other game I can think of that does this right now is Deus Ex. At some point there is a character that stays back to hold of the government while you escape out of the window. At no point does the game go

OBJECTIVES

• Escape the apartment
• OPTIONAL: Stay behind and save Paul

No, this is a decision the player has to make on his own and THAT is what makes saving him so much sweeter. You weren't a robot directed to stay behind to save your bro. YOU took it upon yourself to save him. You are responsible for saving him! You fought the odds! You didn't know if you would be able to but gosh darn it you tried and YOU succeeded. That's the kind of story telling I want in a game. Most games these days play like interactive Hollywood blockbusters and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing there's just a lack of real interactivity. I want to have a game where the players direct actions affect the story. I was thinking before about a situation where this is applicable. Say you have a fantasy game with miracles and the ability to align with certain gods right? Well what's going to happen is to get the good ending of the game you need to be able to use a good miracle that you can only use if you didn't use the alluring dark magic made available throughout the game. If you commit the sin of using dark magic the gods with forsake you and you will not be able to use miracles and that will be a direct choice you make so when you get to the end of the game after using Dark Magic but wanting to have a good ending BAM. You can't and you know that's because of the choice you made to use Dark Magic. That's real. That's a moral choice. It's not A and B. It's choosing X and finding out that X is really B. Of course on the flip side you have the good players that stay true to the side of good throughout the game at the cost of not using the more powerful dark arts. I think Dishonored attempted to do something like this but the effect was lost on me particularly because throughout the game the loading screens told me "If you do bad things, it's gonna be bad mkay..." "Don't do bad things if you don't want bad things to happen, mkay..." which basically forced me to be good because I knew that it was going to straight up have an affect on the ending. I think part of the immersion is the mystery! The disbelief. If I can simply load an old save and redo something it greatly reduces the weight of all my actions. Sure it's catering to the less hardcore gamer but at what cost? I want games I play to be ruthless. Now I think about it Amnesia: The Dark Decent achieved this to some extent. There are 3-4 different endings achievable in the game and it doesn't tell you directly how to achieve them all. Some are reliant on actions taken prior to the ending scene. I like that! I think Amnesia: The Dark Decent is a masterfully crafted game. It achieves COMPLETELY what it sets out to do which is to scare the dandy-crackers out of me. It does it too well. I can't even play it I'm so scared but damn when I play it is it invigorating. So anyway while I didn't start writing this thinking about anything in particular I think I now know my point. I think that there aren't enough games where you and only you influence the story through your direct actions. I might come back to this since there are more things to mention like Mass Effect and whatnot but until then... Bye.

Pic related: It's a game with a good story and a good way of telling it

 EDIT: Okay, it's 6:42am right now and I had another thing to add. Soundtrack. So important in a game. Bastion, Halo, Katamari... and so many more games have a great soundtrack. That just makes them all so much better. Gives the game a soul.