The Decline of Good Writing In Gaming
Over the last few years I've found that I skip dialogue in games, and that was never something I used to do. There was a time when I would explore every topic of conversation with characters, whether they were main characters/ quest givers, or unnamed NPCs, such as villagers, guards, or whatever.
Writing In Games
I've noticed that over the years, writing has taken something of a backseat compared to graphics, or gameplay. This is kind of expected in FPS games like COD, or Battlefield. Typically shooters are intended to focus more on gameplay, and big moments, rather than smaller character-driven narratives.
One genre I'm shocked about writing being lackluster is large-scale RPGs, especially AAA games, or high-concept stories and new IPs trying to get established in an industry where most people are torn between many different flashing lights.
The ability to stand out is important in the gaming industry, especially when there are so many free games, that seem to attract a large portion of the industry's audience.
Has There Been Anything To Be Excited About?
I've been so bored recently, and I haven't been excited about anything new coming out. Halo: Infinite was a new entry into the Halo franchise, and while I did initially enjoy playing it, I found that the story didn't seem to have that special something that made the first 3 games in the series so amazing.
There are so many moments in the first 3 Halo games that are still fondly remembered, and those moments are what cemented Master Chief's position in the industry as a whole. Alongside the games, there were multiple novels, short films/ feature films, fan-made animations, and a TV show. All of those were brought to life on the backs of the creators and writers of those games. Halo: Infinite by comparison, I don't think will, or has lived in the minds of gamers rent-free, and if it weren't for the multiplayer modes, I don't think anyone would be playing it.
I think of Starfield, and compare it - an RPG - to a plain old First Person Shooter like Halo. RPGs are special in terms of gaming, as there is more than just playing the game going on with that genre. You're discovering new places, meeting new people, and interacting with a world, Through The Lens - Shout out to @grocko - of a character you have created and crafted, which is intended to be an imprint of the player.
When I write a short film and cast actors to go ahead and shoot the thing, I tend to meet with them before going out on set - either in person around a table, or in online meetings - and we discuss the script, I answer questions they have about their characters, and I always encourage them to add their own spin on their characters, and give them the freedom to reword, or even create their own lines of dialogue. Why do I do that? Well, in my mind, I believe that someone having some creative freedom to do with their character encourages them to work harder to bring it to life. In a way, they're not working for me to bring my vision to life, they're working for themselves, and have skin in the game, so to speak.
RPGs reflect that same mindset when you think about it. In a way, Halo feels a bit like an RPG, because Master Chief is something of a blank canvas. You can imagine yourself being behind the suit, which is a good reason not to show his face - which is a point that the TV show missed.
Starfield offered us the ability to travel through space, meet new people, learn some history, and lore, as well as discover the inner workings of many different factions and organisations. But, it was boring, so why would anyone want to dig deeper? I did try initially and found it was shallow. Something like Mass Effect springs to mind when thinking of grand sci-fi, and space opera games, and how I felt about that trilogy was very different from how I felt about Starfield.
The initial 10 or so hours felt great, and it started strong. However, by the time I reached the 30-hour mark my interest in the game's world was waning, until finally, I stopped playing. It's been months now and I recently removed it from the Xbox because I just didn't feel like going back.
Before I got bored, I started skipping through dialogue - something I don't usually do - and that was the start of the issues.
Is It Just Me?
Maybe I'm older now, and maybe my attention span has shrunk. Maybe it's the lack of time that has made me want to skip through the boring stuff so I can have as much fun as possible in a short amount of time.
Nope.
I went back to Fallout: New Vegas - a game I've played multiple times over the last 13 or 14 years since it released... damn, I feel old.
Anyway, one thing I noticed was that skipping dialogue didn't happen. I wasn't thinking about how much time I had to play, I wasn't looking at my phone, I was just doing a quest. I was thinking about where I could go to find some stuff to sell, I was in the moment and wondered if I was strong enough to tackle Quarry Junction. Before going to sleep I was thinking of what my next move would be. As I was going about my daily life I was wondering about who I'd side with.
The thing that Fallout: New Vegas does well is write compelling arguments which makes the players of the game debate some of these moral quandaries. Everything is morally grey, and you have to decide the best way to deal with it.
The Legion are the baddies of the game, or are they? They lock down the roads, so traders and travelers find it much easier to walk their territory without being preyed upon by bandits and raiders. Drugs aren't allowed either, so there are no fiends or addicts in their territory. They'd be the good option if it weren't for their misdeeds which are far out-weighed by the good they do.
The NCR seems like a good option until you take into account its corruption. They're understaffed and under-equipped. They don't have the support from the West that they require, and most of their best soldiers are acting as personal security for large Brahmin Barons while there is a major conflict taking place where those forces could be better utilised. If they do seize the dam and win, most of that power goes back to the West, and the people of Nevada are left in the same dire situation they're currently living in.
It's well written because it's not made clear what you should do, that decision is yours to make, and when someone can be thinking of this fictional world while going about their daily life, you know you've done well.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the games I've played recently that filled me with that passion for good storytelling and left me daydreaming about it while not playing. It spawned an anime too, which just built upon the foundation it laid, and allowed for a wider audience to appreciate the world.
Good Storytelling In Games
It just seems harder and harder to find something that really captures my imagination, and I find myself these days being dragged back to games from 10+ years ago, to revisit worlds that I love, rather than explore new ones.
All icing, no cake. That's something that comes to mind with each passing year. That's what most games have become now. Beautiful, but boring, and I'm sick of it. I like a bit of dirt on the sleeve, some warts and scars. I don't care if a game comes out polished, as long as it has some heart or something interesting to say.
Why build a mansion, if the foundation crumbling? If you're going to create a new IP, at least make it interesting, leave a few things ambiguous, and leave room for novels, comics, shows, and potentially a film.
Where we are now seems to be a throwaway society, we can see that everywhere. Phones are basically disposable, as is just about everything. Even our entertainment.
We binge-watch our shows and then start complaining that the next season isn't coming fast enough, by the time it releases, we've forgotten about it. Games too seem to be here, we rush through them and then watch a breakdown of the story before going to sleep. It's sad, and the industry has allowed it to happen by putting no thought or care into their products.
Writing should be first and foremost, it should be established long before production begins. It's - in a way - the easiest part of making a game, but it's ignored.
It's like developers now shrug off the idea of writing something thought-provoking. It's as if they think, "Well the dialogue will get skipped anyway, so who cares." I care, and I'm sure many others out there do too.
Truth! Completely agree with your opinion here. A lot of story, especially dialogues, have become cookie cutter for sure. Now it might be because of the amount of games coming out too. And like you said, it could be because we are getting old, and the young don't care as much. But I go back into my teens and early twenties, and I used to play those 2.5D solve a mystery games with four five options to choose from. There were star trek ones, and some around detectives investigating the occult (I used to love these series but forget it's name) The dialogues in those were not Oscar winning but good enough that we forgave the blocky pixel UI and the story played in our head as much as it did on the screen. When playin games like Arkham Asylum or City, or even open ended games like GTA, that same compulsion to know what happens next, or interest in how things resolve is no longer there.
Having said all the above I did download a anniversary version of an old fav that we used to find hilarious when young - the Lounge Lizard Larry series - with its xrated jokes and scenarios in cartoon without any actual xrated scenes. Despite the cheap and cliched dialogues I remember finding the story and dialogues quite entertaining. Sadly it has not aged well and when i tried playing again it just did not have the same impact. So it might just be me getting old and jaded :D
Oh kind of like the choose your own adventure games? I have a cool collection of those type of books from when I was in my teens, they're a lot of fun. There are some of those kinds of games on the mobile app store, which I've played through and really enjoyed.
That's the thing though, with good writing, you're more than happy to excuse bad graphics or clunky gameplay. That's why it's so easy to go back to a lot of the older games and still find some enjoyment in them.
Hahah I know the game you're talking about, I never actually played it, but have heard about it. He's a bit of a deviant.
Not just choose the adventure ones. The kind of games I am thinking of had its peak in the Monkey Island series (thought that particular series never worked on my machine at the time)
In trying to remember I found this decent Wikipedia page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game
This has excited me to revisit some of these games - maybe a future post.
However coming back to the main point my favorite was the Gabriel Knight Series. There were many other puzzle adventures at the time where you had to come up with weird ways to solve. And a lot of pixel hunting to click on the precise thing you wanted. And Gabriel Knight has some of them too. However the story of Gabriel Knight was crazy cool. A simple detective actions transforms into possible occult activity in the deep south (if I remember correctly). And the series just built on the older games. I remember despite being a big Doom2 fan I still loved this playing it on my monochrome monitor.
I remember many more games I played then which is not marked in this page. I need to try to remind myself of those and as I said maybe a germ of an interesting post here :)
Good storytelling is in decline as attention spans keep getting lower and lower.
I kind of covered that here where I said that I wondered if it was me, but then while revisiting older games I love, I realised it isn't true. It's just that most games now are just boring, and that's why we can't keep our attention.
Things go in decline with so many things. I bet all those story writers for games should revisit Robert McKee' "Story", then they would know how to make things engaging and interesting for all players.
I guess the problem also comes from the cryptic kind of storytelling games like Demon Souls and everything soulslike have brought to the gaming industry. But even those games know how to get people into piecing together the lore of the game and the story.
I've always loved how most of the Fallout games were able to tell stories without words, with how locations looked, or how the things were placed around rooms.
Yup, even the first ones with the DnD grids did a great job in storytelling.
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Lately I've been trying to read all the dialogues possible in video games, since honestly it's a habit I lost, and I used to do it quite a lot, even when the language barrier was complicated, I remember trying hard to figure out what the dialogue was saying with the help of a small dictionary. I prefer games from 10 years ago, as I feel they are better made, regardless of whether they have good graphics or not. Like you, I don't get excited lately about the new games that come out, they may catch my attention, but it's not really the same as it used to be.
I found your post late, and it is a shame, since it is a topic that I have discussed a lot with some acquaintances. That companies are saving the expense of the script and the construction of the characters in favor of graphics or a lot of action.
That works for a while, but the game soon ends up being put aside.
I really enjoy games when they have a good story, and I even go back to New Vegas from time to time, the game is really worth it.
I have found interesting stories, but sometimes they are very short stories, in the games I have tried lately, from time to time I get a surprise and I can enjoy an entertaining adventure.