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Wired.co.uk delves into the world of gameplay mechanics and narrative in computer games, asking games writers, developers and industry specialists about the challenges and pitfalls of telling a story via a game.

"You don't just plop out as a fully-formed badass," Rhianna Pratchett tells Wired.co.uk. The writer is not making a claim about herself, but discussing her most recent project which saw her revisit a gaming legacy. On 5 March, the 17-year-old Tomb Raider franchise gains its newest instalment, rolling back the years to tell the story of how Lara Croft became a "badass".

"It's always a little tricky to navigate an existing fan-base, especially when it comes to something with the history of Tomb Raider. We certainly knew that we were taking a little bit of a risk going back to a time when Lara was more uncertain of her abilities and vulnerable, not because she's female, but because she's human and thrown into a dangerous, confusing situation with no weapons and very little knowhow," explains Pratchett.

More than any previous Tomb Raider, this latest outing will attempt to convey a journey -- the narrative of Lara's transition from university graduate to the brave, gun-wielding archaeological adventurer with whom gamers are well acquainted. The success of this game will, in part, hang on that narrative -- Crystal Dynamics could have made another very enjoyable Tomb Raider romp led by arguably the most iconic game heroine ever created, but that was an experience they had already offered gamers. At a Q&A held at Bafta last month, game designers Darren Gallagher and Noah Hughes shared how they wanted to tell the unknown story of Lara's journey to become the character we know now.

As such, Lara isn't going to be "reborn" purely through gameplay mechanics, but through storytelling: her character arc will influence every challenge the gamer faces, from killing her first "bad guy" to solving her first riddle. "The traits that you associate with Lara Croft of old are still there, we've just rewound her to a time when they were buried deeper below the surface," says Pratchett. "It's what she experiences during the game, good and bad; shattering and exhilarating, and more importantly, her actions, that begin to shape and galvanise her towards becoming the Tomb Raider." Crystal Dynamics and Pratchett have embraced that heady computer game challenge; to create a game that tells a story.

A unique story challenge
The relationship between computer games and stories is an odd one. "Traditional" storytelling media, such as books (which have been going for several hundred years) and cinema (a little over a hundred years) are still very capable of failing to tell a convincing story. Comparatively youthful computer games, whose primary focus should always be one of gameplay, are thus taking on a huge task should they be hoping to tell a story through their game. The way in which computer games embark on "storytelling" requries a very different understanding to these traditional models, according to games writer David Midgley.

"Structure is so important to traditional story forms, whereas a game is only as good as its ability to react and change in response to the player's actions," explains Midgley, whose previous work includes such titles as Driver: San Francisco and Halo 4. "Given that, even those marketed as having characters and big stories might not always fit the traditional definition. As a result I think we need to widen the definition of story, and call it something more general, like 'art'. In the case of narratives with characters, this partly occurs through viewing the universe with the characters' experiences as a prism. In games, those experiences occur even more vicariously through the player's direct agency in the game."

It's a view echoed by F.E.A.R. 3 narrative designer Cory Lanham, who views the strength of a game's storytelling ability and artistic process as stemming from a feature unique to games: gameplay mechanics. "If novels have the page, and films have the image, then games have their mechanics. Building a game narrative around a its core mechanics, using said mechanics as a means to focus and convey your narrative's idea, is the best way I know to get a meaningful and relevant story out of a game. You have to ask the question, 'What to these game mechanics say?', 'What idea can we convey using these mechanics?' Building a game narrative that ignores or marginalises the game's core mechanics is like sitting down to make a graphic novel and filling every panel with nothing but text. You might as well have just written a book."

The most interesting comparison Wired.co.uk was offered for the creative challenge that faces games writers was offered by Hide and Seek managing director Margaret Robinson: writing a good game is like writing a good opera. "Opera is subject to the same criticism that video games sometimes have thrown at them; the stories tend to be very melodramatic and broad brush, they're not necessarily the most sophisticated plots," explains Robinson. "Stories in opera need to leave space for the music; the libretto [text] shouldn't have to tell you everything you need to know about the character or the setting or the underlying scene -- you need part of that to come not just from the music but from the performance of that music, so that whoever's writing the opera's story leaves for the conductor and the actor when they bring it to life. There's a little bit of that in games, to leave space for the action and the player, who is going to render a performance of that story that is going to be uniquely there own."

Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/04/storytelling-in-computer-games

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