I’m not the only one in the world to think that too many games from the latest generation(s) have tried far too hard to try and emulate films. The temptation is obvious:- games do appear to have a great deal in common with film but that’s where the similarity ends. There’s a blogpost or presentation by Adrian Hon I recall where he comments on the fervour around GTA IV when it was released and how certain writers described the story as being better than The Godfather‘s – when in reality, if viewed with any kind of scrutiny, this was patently not the case.

I brought this up at one of the Guardian Blog’s Breakfasts at GameCity last month by saying the reason I thought games like Rockstar‘s GTA IV and the recent Red Dead Redemption felt like they had stories that were more engaging than some big-name films, were because their environments were so complete and, rather than have a single story thread that the player must laboriously follow, they provided the opportunity to tell hundreds of stories through their environments – such as with the vast number of radio stations that players could choose from while driving in GTA IV, which provided comment and news from in-game characters.

It occurs to me that a strength that videogames have over film and literature is their ability to create environments that players can explore at their own convenience and that have the ability to tell hundreds or even thousands of stories auxiliary to the central plot. At was at this point that I was countered by Adam Saltsman who interrupted me to say that the film Stalker by Andrey Tarkovsky did a perfect job of using environments to tell stories. My point, however, was that, although it’s not impossible for films or books to do it, it was an advantage that games had because the character is under the control of the player rather than under the control of the author. On the flip-side and for the opposite reason, pure narrative is an advantage that films and books have over games. Having said that, however, it’s still not impossible for games to be competent and tell their stories purely with a narrative rather than with the environment.

The best example I can think of this is the recently released Enslaved: Odyssey to the West from Ninja Theory, which, although I’m currently only halfway through the main story, is really engaging despite not using the environment at all for storytelling. It helps that it’s fun to play too. In this particular case it helps that the script has been co-written by Alex Garland who was responsible for the novel The Beach and for the screenplays of Sunshine and 28 Days Later (here is an interview that Alex gave to Edge magazine about writing and videogames). Having a professional author and screenwriter on the writing credits is very rare, and of course this may change in future, but I really hope that this trend does not become the norm.

Why, you may ask, do I wish that this does not become the norm? Because, as I pointed out before, games have an advantage that films and books do not have: the environment. As such, perhaps screenwriters are not the most apt writers of future videogames. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have a professionally written narrative in a sea of bland stories that don’t engage from any angle, but I personally feel that the best stories in games will have very little in common with the best stories from film and literature. And in my opinion, that’s how it should be.

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