TheGreatJoeGargery wrote:I feel the story should always be in service to the game, not the game to the story.
This is one of the fundamental points we disagree on. If we're talking about a story-based game like the ones I make, my preference is for the game to be in service to the story. Obviously this isn't true of ALL games. Tetris doesn't need a story. And I've enjoyed a number of xbox games that didn't really have stories. But if I'm going to look back fondly on the game years later, it's almost always going to be because of the story, not the gameplay.
Like I said, I see games as a storytelling medium, like oral histories, novels, comics, and movies. Games, by being 1st person and making the player interact with them have the possibility of drawing the player in more and allowing more compelling storytelling, but that needs to be balanced against allowing the player to do things that break the story. Few people would want to read a book about a guy who wants to help his girlfriend get a part in the play, but does a mediocre job of it, so she doesn't succeed. And few people would want to read a book 10 times to get minor variations on the same story. (First he went to the strip club, then he went to the bar. No first he went to the bar, then he went to the strip club.) A developer needs to find the right balance. But when they do ... OMG.
Here's an example that stuck with me.
The first Star Wars movie. Bad guy says, "Fire" and destroys a planet.
I thought, "Oooh, he's a bad dude."
The Bioware Star Wars: Nights of the old Republic game. You spend about ten hours doing things to help people on a planet, including convincing someone to take her kids and get away from an abusive situation. Then, as you're getting off the planet, the bad guy says, "Fire" and destroys it.
I sat there with my mouth agape. "But ... but ... what about all those people I just saved? No, he's going to see my ship escaping and realize he doesn't need to destroy the planet. Right? Right?" Then, as the planet burned, my heart hurt.
That's "game as a storytelling medium" at its best. But the game forced that story on me. You could argue that, with more agency, we could have had a storyline where that didn't happen. But I would argue that the game would be weaker for it.
There are two scenes in Redemption for Jessika that make me choke up a bit. There's enough agency in the game that you can miss them (there are a few a paths that they're not part of). If anyone played the game and only did the paths that don't show him those scenes, then I'm ... sad.
There's a dialog tree in Life with Keeley that reveals something really important about Keeley and Keisha. But it's not on the ideal path, so most people never saw it. As a storytelling game developer, that colored my opinions on the balance between agency and story. (I feel that I got it wrong there.)
TheGreatJoeGargery wrote:The interaction with the game is how the game communicates with the player.
I also disagree with this. In my opinion, the story is how the game communicates with the player. The interaction with the game colors the story. An example here was in the first Deus Ex game where you fought your way through a ton of bad guys for a long time, only to get a frantic call from some people equally far away that they were about to get killed. Having just lived it, you know you couldn't possibly get to them in time. There's storytelling power there. It's much more compelling than text about how the character's heart sinks when he realizes he can't possibly get there in time. My heart actually sunk.
Again, diverse opinons are good things. There's nothing wrong with people who enjoy playing similar content multiple times to see every variation. And there's nothing wrong with people who want the option to not experience the story that the developer is trying to tell. But my tastes differ from those, and I write games for my tastes.
Tlaero