CHAPTER
Ten
Open-Ended Stories
FIGURE 10.1
Open-ended storytelling.
Open-ended stories are something of an evolution of the branching path formula, but several notable things set them apart. First, branching path stories retain a strong writer-controlled structure that moves the player from decision point to decision point; open-ended stories are far more player-driven. Players have numerous ways to approach nearly every quest and situation and are often free to progress through the game any way they want. Even important story scenes can often be done out of order or even skipped entirely. The decision points in open-ended stories also tend to be far more organic than those in branching path stories, with the branch chosen based on the player’s actions and speech, rather than a clear-cut choice.
Outside the main plot, open-ended stories tend to feature a large world (or country, city, or the like) that players are more or less free to explore during most parts of the game. While doing so, players will encounter a myriad of different optional quests and activities that they can choose to take on or ignore. Many games with open-ended stories also feature a morality system, with players’ actions changing their moral alignment and affecting how various NPCs act toward them.
Because of their extreme complexity, open-ended stories can be very tricky to write, and in fact, frequently feature shorter and simpler main plots than games that use less player-driven forms of storytelling. To make up for this, a heavy focus is placed on developing the setting and providing the player with numerous optional activities to keep him or her busy. Open-ended stories can be considered the best way to tell a highly player-driven story in video games, even more so than fully player-driven stories (for reasons we’ll talk about in the next chapter). As such, high-profile games using open-ended storytelling are generally the poster children for industry figures who argue for the superiority of highly player-driven stories. But despite this, the style comes with many challenges and quite a lot of innate weaknesses, making it very challenging to use and somewhat limiting its popularity among players (see Chapter 14).
Structure Without Sequence
As you will see throughout this chapter, the real challenge in game stories of this type for the writer doesn’t lie in the typical “How can I make this quest interesting?” issue, but rather high above that, in the realm of “Have I created an interesting enough world so that the players can create compelling stories for themselves?” This is a new kind of challenge for the writer. We are used to creating both the setup as well as the reversal leading to the climax, and then sorting out all the details of the journey from one stage to the next. In this type of story, the player does the sorting. Most stories of this type are simple because of this design constraint. Yet-to-be answered questions for writers in this structure are
• How do you truly surprise a player in this kind of structure?
• Can dramatic tension be kept at an appropriate level in this kind of story?
At this point in the history of game writing, I think the jury is still out on those two concerns. Or we haven’t gotten our act together yet.
—Chris
Case Study: Fallout 3
| Developer: | Bethesda Game Studios |
| Publisher: | ZeniMax Media |
| System: | Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC |
| Release Date: | October 28, 2008 (US) |
| Genre: | Action RPG |
FIGURE 10.2
Despite the destruction, the Capital Wasteland is a rich and vibrant setting. Fallout 3 © 2008 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. All rights reserved.
The Fallout series’ complex battle system, nuclear war–ravaged Earth, and dark stories made them some of the more popular PC RPGs in the late 1990s. However, when series creator Interplay sold the rights to Bethesda, creators of The Elder Scrolls series (one of which is discussed later in this chapter), fans were worried about the new direction Fallout would take. Fortunately, though Fallout 3 did adopt some of the presentation and gameplay elements of The Elder Scrolls, it stayed true enough to the world and story of the previous games to please longtime fans while also attracting many new players with its large world and more action-oriented gameplay.
Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, two hundred years after a nuclear war decimated modern civilization. Since then, the world has become a dangerous place, filled with violent mutants, ruthless slave gangs, and several warring factions trying to become the new leaders of the age. It’s not a world for the weak or inexperienced. However, there are pockets of survivors who have lived on unaffected by the terrifying changes that swept the world, hidden away inside massive vaults before the bombs fell. The hero, an unnamed man or woman created by the player, grew up in one such vault, having never seen the outside world. However, when his (we’ll just pretend the hero is a man for this discussion) father goes missing, the hero ventures out of the confines of the vault and into the Capital Wasteland, the ravaged remains of what was once Washington, D.C.
The hero’s quest to find his father brings him into contact with many of the wasteland’s warring factions including the Brotherhood of Steel (a cultish military group), the Outcasts (former Brotherhood members), and the Enclave (the corrupted remnants of the U.S. government) as he learns more about his father’s past, his groundbreaking research, and the history of the world itself. The hero, however, lacks the complex backstory that characterizes most main characters in less player-driven stories, and even the main plot itself tends to be overshadowed by its setting. Though there is a series of main quests to follow in order to advance the story, deviating from the path is easy and encouraged. The Capital Wasteland is a large area with a diverse collection of towns, dangerous locals, and survivors. With so much to see and do, it’s easy to forget about the story missions and go off to explore the world, run some deliveries, seek out caches of rare soda, and engage in countless other optional tasks. The game uses a point-based karma system, which measures how good or evil the hero is based on the player’s actions. Freeing slaves, for example, is good and will raise your karma; capturing people and selling them to the slavers will lower it. Some characters react differently to the hero based on his karma score, and most quests feature multiple completion methods, some of which are significantly more good or evil than others. The story missions have many similar choices, but the only major branching points come very late in the game and affect little other than the brief ending. However, it should be noted that the Broken Steel downloadable content (DLC), which serves as an epilogue to the main story, does accurately portray the results of the player’s earlier choices.
FIGURE 10.3
A lot of effort was put into making Fallout 3’s characters unique and interesting. Fallout 3 © 2008 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. All rights reserved.
The main plot itself isn’t particularly deep or complex – it does have its moments and features quite an interesting cast – but there are always new things to find and do in the Capital Wasteland. Learning more about its history and environs via conversations with NPCs and uncovering lost recordings can be quite engaging. Players also have the ability to mold the hero to fit their preferences, be it smart or strong, good or evil, open or cunning, or somewhere in between.
Fallout 3 also makes good use of DLC, with five separate packs. Three serve to expand the setting and let the player explore some areas outside the Capital Wasteland proper, one adds some depth to the backstory by allowing the hero to participate in a virtual reality reenactment of a key historical event, and the last one serves as an epilogue and allows players to see how their choices near the end of the story go on to affect to the Wasteland and its inhabitants.
In the end, Fallout 3 is an excellent example of open-ended storytelling. It provides the player with a moderately engaging main plot and a large and intriguing area to explore with numerous people, quests, and activities that can be approached in many different ways based on the player’s preferences. It also manages to avoid a lot of the major pitfalls that tend to plague games using open-ended stories (which we’ll talk more about later on). This makes it one of the best current games using open-ended storytelling and a very good introduction to the style.
If you thought that branching path stories required a lot of planning and structural work, you haven’t seen anything yet. Open-ended stories tend to have far more minor and moderate branches than even the most complex branching path stories. The number of major branches doesn’t increase nearly as much (in fact, many open-ended stories have very few major branches) and they’re often a bit on the short side, but all the minor and moderate branches add up fast. The decision points in open-ended stories also tend to be far less clear-cut, so you’ll need to think about less obvious ways to send the player down different branches. In addition, you’ll need to write two or more different variations of most dialog and conversations, based on what type of personality the player has decided to give the hero. After all, people are going to react much differently to a famous hero than they are to a dreaded villain, and those are only two possible character types. Chances are good that you’ll have to write alternate versions of many quests as well, depending not only on the hero’s morality but whether he or she prefers confrontation, stealth, diplomacy, or the like.
Split Personality
Think about this for a minute. Every scene ideally needs to be redesigned from top to bottom for at least two extreme character types. And of course there are all the possible gradations in between. You’re constantly at risk of pushing the player out of the reality as the NPC adopts a tone with the player that seems incongruous with the player’s actions. Though the advantages of this type of gameplay are obvious, it makes scene creation extremely difficult.
Dramatic scenes are basically arguments. The argument may be friendly or fierce, but when you begin creating a dramatic scene, the first question you need to ask is, “What does each character want?” Ideally, there should be some tension between the two distinct wants, even if the tension is simply that one character wants to talk while the other character wants to leave. This conflict can ramp all the way up to such situations as one character wanting to get married while the other one wants to break up.
Now that you know what the conflict is, you then need to figure how it resolves. In each scene you create, one character or the other must “win” the scene for the audience to perceive that the story has advanced in some small way during that scene. Bad scene design has the two characters wrestling their way through the scene with no obvious win or change at the end. The audience will at worst feel subconsciously that the scene was a waste of time, and at best that the scene was flat emotionally. Think of scenes in Star Trek: Next Generation, in which scenes often had no conflict at all. Remember how flat they mostly felt? Compare them to scenes in Battlestar Gallactica, where the conflict was almost always in your face, and how those emotions were almost over-the-top.
Okay, so you need conflict, and now you need resolution. To write the scene, we create a little microstory with ascending action, plot twists, and a climax, all in the short few minutes that these two characters are talking with each other. Those are the guidelines for good scene construction. However, in this kind of story structure, we don’t really know where the player sits on a continuum of good to evil, so we can’t predict how the NPC will feel about the player character when the scene begins. And because we don’t know where the player sits on that continuum, we don’t really know what the player wants, either. If not handled artfully, scenes written in this kind of story environment will tend to all feel like nothing happens in them and like they are a waste of the player’s time. When faced with this challenge, game writers have in the past resorted to a stylized humor in order to give the scene some life, a kind of humor that might seem superficially like they are just being flip. But I believe the root lies in the conundrum of being uncertain what the stakes of the scene are at the moment it happens in the game, and what “wants” the player’s character has, because the writer doesn’t know what personality the player had adopted. The only solution I have encountered that works even slightly is to place at the top of the conversation some kind of interrogatory moment in which the dialog can determine the player’s (or character’s) emotional tone and act accordingly. But with too many of these moments, every bit of dialog feels structured the same.
It is a real dilemma for the writer.
—Chris
Furthermore, as the setting and backstory tend to play a much larger role than they do in less player-driven forms of storytelling, you need to spend a lot of time developing the history of your world and the personalities and backstories of as many NPCs as possible – even those who have little to no importance for the main plot. Lots of NPCs will be needed to dole out and otherwise play important roles in the myriad of optional quests that an open-ended story requires, so the writer’s job is to ensure that those NPCs are interesting and believable and that their quests help to, in some way, further develop the story and/or setting.
A Halloween Parade of Personalities
Often the writer is faced with a dilemma related to the open-ended nature. If you try to make sure that the NPC relates to the main story and is performing the task the story demands of them (which is what you really want to do), you need contextual information that you don’t have. So you default to “one-off” (humourous but not story related) NPCs, which can be very entertaining in the moment of encounter, but a steady diet of such NPCs can risk having the game feel very disconnected.
—Chris
Now, let’s take a look at the three key elements that make up an open-ended story.
Just like in all the story types we’ve already discussed, open-ended stories still need a main plot that focuses on the hero’s epic quest to do … something. Save the world, probably. Because that hasn’t changed, all the information in the previous chapters still applies. Furthermore, in open-ended stories, you can actually get away with having a much shorter and simpler main plot than with most other story types, as all the optional quests and activities will help distract the player and fill in the gaps. More importantly, with all the writing you’ll need to do for that optional stuff, you probably won’t have the time (or budget, for that matter) to create a main plot with the length and depth of FINAL FANTASY XIII or Fate/Stay Night – especially when you consider that you’ll probably need to create at least two or three variations of the dialog for each conversation, quest progression, and the like so that they can change based on the type of hero the player creates.
The biggest problem you’re likely to encounter when working on your main plot is the pacing. Unlike interactive traditional, multiple-ending, and even branching path stories, in which the writer maintains at least a moderate amount of control over the story’s progression, in open-ended stories, the player is the one in control. As such, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a steady pacing when the player is frequently encouraged to wander off and is often free to approach important story-related quests in a multitude of different ways and orders. Often the best you can do is try to ensure that the main plot itself maintains a good pace, as long as the player follows it in one of the intended ways.
As with branching path stories, once you’ve got your main plot planned out, you need to go over it, think of places where it could branch off and what would happen on each of those branches, and then sort through your list and single out the best and most interesting branches to actually add to the story. In an open-ended story, however, you need to pay far more attention to minor and moderate branches. In the end, nearly every quest and mission – both optional and story-related – should contain a branching point leading to one of two or more minor or moderate branches based on things like the hero’s moral alignment, intelligence, and fighting style (or lack thereof). And as I said in the last chapter, it’s very important to make sure that things stay interesting and entertaining – no matter which branch the player ends up on. Also, although you can send the player down different branches as the result of a con-versation at times, try to make most of your decision points less obvious, with the correct branch automatically being chosen based on the player’s past actions (has he or she been friendly or unfriendly to quest-related NPCs, is he or she seen as good or evil, and so on) or simply how the player decides to approach the problem at hand (when told about the relic in the rich man’s house, does the player sneak in through a window, break down the front door with guns blazing, or approach the rich man to try and make a deal?).
Major branches are actually far less of an issue in open-ended stories. In fact, many of them contain only a single major branching point late in the game that determines which ending the player receives – a far cry from games like Front Mission 3 and Fate/Stay Night, in which major branching points are found early on and change the vast majority of the game. Although increasing the number of major branches and spacing them throughout the game greatly increases the importance of the player’s decisions and the amount of replay value, when it comes down to it, with the vast number of minor and moderate branches and optional activities that need to be made, developers usually don’t have the time, manpower, and/or budget to also create multiple nearly full-length main branches, especially considering that those main branches also need their own sets of minor and moderate branches. So it’s generally best to keep your plans for major branches relatively simple.
By “distractions,” I’m referring to the large number of optional quests and other things the players can do to occupy themselves that aren’t directly related to the main plot. In Fallout 3, for example, there’s a wide variety of quests that include freeing or capturing slaves, finding stashes of the rare Nuka Cola Quantum to sell to a collector, and running dozens upon dozens of other optional tasks for the citizens of the Capital Wasteland. Grand Theft Auto IV (which we’ll talk about a little later in this chapter) has numerous “random encounters” where the hero can run into various NPCs (many of whom were first met as part of the main story), triggering cut-scenes and/or optional quests. It also features chains of brief miniquests like stealing certain cars for a wealthy collector, working as a taxi driver, and hunting down various wanted criminals for the local police. Then there’s the relationship system, via which the hero, Nico, can befriend and/or date various characters. These characters will then help him in a variety of ways, but only if he maintains a good relationship by frequently taking them out on enjoyable outings.
While these activities don’t need to tie directly into the main story (and their creation is often more the job of a designer than a writer), they should all fit well within the world and the specific setting. Nico is a criminal living a bachelor’s life in the big city with his cousin, a taxi driver. Keeping that in mind, it’s only natural that he’d steal cars, go on dates, and drive a taxi from time to time. The hero in Fallout 3, on the other hand, is a more generic character defined by the player’s actions, so the quests have less to do with him and more to do with the characters he meets and the condition of the world in general. Because ghouls, slavers, and other threats roam the Wasteland, it makes perfect sense that other people would have problems with them and be looking for a skilled fighter to help them out. You don’t need to infuse all of these tasks with a whole lot of story elements, but it’s a good idea to use them to expand on the world and setting. If you have a well-defined hero like Nico, use the “distractions” to better show his personality, goals, and backstory. If you’re using a generic hero, focus on developing the personalities and backstories of your NPCs. Use some of them to better explain the world/country/city in which the game takes place, expanding on its inhabitants, culture, political climate, and history. Although it’s easy to just toss in a bunch of random things to keep the player busy, tying them into the story in one way or another will make them feel more like a natural part of the game and its setting, rather than a tacked-on activity, and will make your world feel much more interesting and alive.
Case Study: Fable II
| Developer: | Lionhead Studios |
| Publisher: | Microsoft Game Studios |
| Writers: | Peter Molyneux, Rich Bryant, Dene Carter, Mark Hill |
| System: | Microsoft Xbox 360 |
| Release Date: | October 21, 2008 (US) |
| Genre: | Action RPG |
FIGURE 10.4
Even in the early parts of the game, the player is given many different ways to approach each task. Fable II © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Used with permission from Microsoft Corporation.
Designer Peter Molyneux is a very vocal supporter of highly player-driven stories in games. And although even many of his biggest fans admit that he has a tendency to promise a lot more than he can deliver, the Fable series contains some of the most innovative open-ended stories available.
Fable II’s main plot is short and rather simplistic, a fact that Molyneux himself has readily admitted and has worked to improve upon in Fable III. In Fable II, set in the land of Albion, the hero is a young street urchin named Sparrow. Shortly into the game, his (or her, depending on whether the player chose a male or female Sparrow) sister Rose is killed by the tyrannical ruler Lord Lucien and Sparrow himself is wounded and left for dead. He’s saved by a mysterious fortune teller, who informs him that he carries the blood of an ancient hero and must find and unite the heroes of strength, will, and skill in order to defeat Lucien and bring peace to the land. The quest to gather the heroes and stop Lucien is broken up into several sections, spanning 20 years of Sparrow’s life. With a few exceptions, the important characters mostly follow standard archetypes and the plot’s handful of twists are all fairly predictable. Instead, the main focus is on letting players explore all Albion has to offer while molding Sparrow to suit their personality and play style.
Fable II presents players with a huge amount of freedom. Albion is a large kingdom with many places to explore and numerous optional quests to undertake on behalf of its citizenry. Almost every quest has both a good and evil method of completion, allowing players to strive toward becoming the ultimate hero, ultimate villain, or something in between. Nearly every property in the game can also be bought and rented out by the player, providing a steady stream of income and other bonuses, such as reduced prices at shops the player owns. Buying out all of the property in various towns and cities can also lead to the hero being appointed mayor or even king over different parts of Albion, though these titles are more for show than anything else, leaving out most of the practical matters that would normally be associated with running a town or country.
The player can also woo and marry the woman or man of his choice, set up a household, and raise a family. Other less wholesome practices such as adultery and polygamy are also possible, as is divorce if Sparrow’s spouse discovers that he’s been engaging in such deviant behaviors. Though an interesting diversion, and fitting in a game that strives to let the player do it all, the entire system is rather shallow. Wooing the girl or guy of your dreams is a very easy matter, comprised of flirting briefly, giving a good gift, and then presenting the chosen character with a ring at an appropriate spot – a far simpler task than that found in dating sims or even some other open-ended story games such as the Harvest Moon series, in which winning the heart of your desired spouse is a lengthy and difficult process. Running your household is also simple, with Sparrow’s spouse requiring little more than a nice house, a lot of money, and the occasional visit to remain happy. Having children doesn’t really change matters one way or the other, though it does lead to a couple of optional quests later on.
FIGURE 10.5
Sparrow’s appearance is shaped by the player’s actions, and can range from angelic to monstrous. Fable II © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Used with permission from Microsoft Corporation.
Sparrow himself (or herself) has a good/evil scale (much like Fallout 3’s karma system) as well as a purity/corruption scale that changes based on the player’s actions throughout the game. It should be noted that the two are not directly related, and it’s perfectly possible to have a good but corrupt or evil but pure Sparrow. Being particularly good, evil, pure, or corrupt opens up various special quests that the player can undertake and changes the way Albion’s inhabitants react to Sparrow. Sparrow’s physical appearance is also affected. A good Sparrow appears handsome and heroic; an evil one is pale, twisted, and frightening. Similarly, a pure Sparrow will gain a healthy complexion and a halo; a corrupt one sports diseased skin and horns. Several other stats also affect Sparrow’s appearance, making him appear stronger, taller, and/or more magically inclined.
The good and evil scale is pretty straightforward. Things like lying, stealing, and killing innocents are evil; helping others and giving charity are good. The purity and corruption scale is a little less obvious. Sparrow becomes purer by doing things like maintaining a vegetarian diet and using a condom during sex and becomes corrupt by eating meat, drinking, and general debauchery. Some of the designers’ decisions could certainly be questioned, such as whether meat should really be seen as corrupt and why the corruption gotten from hiring a prostitute is more than offset by the purity gained from using a condom during the encounter, but the system is fairly easy to figure out and stays consistent throughout the game. The real problem with many of the good and evil systems used in games is how easy it is to cheat them, which is especially apparent in Fable II. As previously mentioned, engaging in corrupt acts such as adultery or hiring prostitutes can easily be negated by things like using condoms or eating a few pieces of tofu. So, as long as Sparrow practices safe sex and eats plenty of tofu, everyone in Albion will consider him a model of purity, regardless of what impure and debauched acts he participates in. The good and evil scale is also easy to manipulate. Becoming fully evil is as simple as slaughtering a group of helpless villagers, which makes sense. However, as good and evil are on a simple sliding scale, the murderous Sparrow can then become a paragon of good simply by giving a large sum of gold to a needy beggar. In real life, such an act may make the beggar love you, but it certainly wouldn’t do much to improve your standing in the eyes of everyone else. This quick bounce between ultimate good and ultimate evil can be repeated as many times as the player wants, robbing the system of any sense of consequence or realism.
One last interesting story decision in Fable II is the way in which Sparrow interacts with NPCs and story scenes. Instead of using branching dialog such as in Fallout 3, Sparrow communicates by using various physical gestures. These gestures range from the sensible (such as motioning for someone to follow) to the ridiculous (hand puppets, farting, and the like). Depending on which gestures Sparrow uses, different NPCs will react in different ways. It’s a unique change from the usual dialog systems, and some players really enjoy playing around with the different gestures. However, the whole concept can feel rather ridiculous at times (especially considering what many of the gestures entail), and often makes Sparrow come across more as a crazed mime or village idiot than a destined hero. Sparrow is also free to move around and use his various gestures during most of the game’s cut-scenes, though this can best be considered interactivity for interactivity’s sake, as it serves no real purpose other than giving the player the option to run away and cancel the cut-scene partway through (which, in the end, is also pointless, because the cut-scene will just replay when the player returns to the area).
In the end, Fable II provides players with a large world to explore and a nearly endless number of ways to pass their time, though at the cost of a rich, well-paced narrative. Similarly, it gives them considerable control over Sparrow’s development, personality, and actions, but as a result, he has little background, personality, or consistency. These are the types of trade-offs that you routinely have to face when writing open-ended stories (the matter of whether they’re worth it is something we’ll discuss in Chapters 12 through 14). It should be noted that Lionhead Studios is aware of these issues and tried to improve them in the recently released Fable III.
Depending on your own preferences, Fable II’s open-ended story can be seen as either a masterpiece of free choice and player-driven storytelling or a failed experiment showcasing everything that’s wrong with the style. But, regardless of your views, for better or worse, it clearly accomplishes its goal of putting the player, not the writer, in control.
The Strengths of Open-Ended Stories
The strength of open-ended stories is their freedom. When compared to interactive traditional, multiple-ending, and branching path stories, open-ended stories provide players with an enormous amount of freedom to say and do as they please. Though there are still limits (they can’t go anywhere or do anything that wasn’t specifically placed in the game by the designers, writers, art team, and program-mers), the amount of freedom and choice available in games like Fable II and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is immense. The player still has a main plot to follow when he or she wants to, but the real fun in open-ended stories comes from developing your character and exploring every little thing the game world has to offer, especially when there are so many different ways to go about it. For those who are convinced that player control is the most important part of game stories, the freedom of open-ended stories speaks for itself. It’s the ultimate strength. For those who don’t believe that highly player-driven storytelling is such a good thing, the strength of the style comes not from the story itself, but from the large detailed world in which that story takes place.
Indeed, the real arena in which the writer can succeed in these types of stories is not in the micro sense (isn’t it interesting how Fable deals with the dialog question?), but rather in the way the world is architected. If we look at the design issues when we create a scene (look for conflict between the characters, and then drive that conflict home by the end of the scene, resolving it in some way), the same guideline applies to overall story design. The writers’ job in a world like this is to create a world where the conflict is built in, which is where Fallout 3 succeeds. The conflict in a ravaged postapocalyptic world is evident in every encounter. An ill-chosen setup in a game like this can be impossible to overcome, regardless of how cleverly your dialog is written.
—Chris
Case Study: Grand Theft Auto IV
| Developer: | Rockstar North |
| Publisher: | Rockstar Games |
| Writers: | Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries |
| System: | Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC |
| Release Date: | April 29, 2008 (US) |
| Genre: | Sandbox, Action Adventure |
Though many games are responsible for the development of the so-called sandbox genre (characterized by giving the player a large setting [sandbox] where he can do as he pleases), it owes much of its current popularity to the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, particularly 2001’s GTA III. Despite its title, GTA IV is actually the eleventh game in the series. Like in previous GTA games, GTA IV places the player in the role of a criminal out to make his way in the world and accomplish his goals by any means necessary. Murder, extortion, drugs, and, of course, theft are all business as usual. Some of the GTA games have been praised for their stories, but the real star of the show is the setting and the freedom players have to explore, interact with others, and cause general chaos and mayhem.
GTA IV tells the tale of Nico Bellic, a European war veteran turned smuggler who has just come to live with his cousin Roman in Liberty City (based heavily on New York City). There he hopes to both pursue the American dream and find the man who betrayed his unit back in their army days. But as Nico soon discovers, he can’t leave his old life behind so easily. Roman quickly introduces him to Liberty City’s seedier side, leading him to perform missions for many of the city’s biggest crime bosses. As time goes on, Nico and Roman make friends and enemies with many colorful characters and come face to face with the best and worst humanity has to offer. Nico himself is a surprisingly complex character and reacts in a consistent and believable way despite the extreme situations he finds himself in. The main plot is fairly long and well paced, though there are very few points when the player actually has a chance to change the story, and only the last of those can be considered a major branching point, with the players’ decision determining which of the two endings they receive. When combined with its well-defined main character, GTA IV is rather close to a multiple-ending story; at one point I did consider classifying it as such. However, although the main plot doesn’t quite fit the norm for open-ended stories, the rest of the game most certainly does.
The entirety of Liberty City is open for Nico to explore from early on. Though there’s always a clear chain of story missions for players to follow when they wish to advance the plot, it’s easy for them to take a back seat to all the distractions found throughout the city. Most NPCs are generic pedestrians, but there are special characters scattered throughout the city (often people Nico met during previous story missions) who are available for interaction, leading to cut-scenes and/or optional quests. Nico can also befriend certain characters and date several different women. Each friend and girlfriend has his or her own personality, likes, and dislikes, and maintaining good relationships encourages them to aid him in a variety of different ways. Nico can also take part in a number of setting-appropriate optional missions, such as stealing rare cars, working as a taxi driver, and even hunting down wanted criminals. All of these tasks, though they have little to no affect on the main plot, fit perfectly within the world and story of the game, making them feel like a perfectly logical and natural extension of Nico’s life in Liberty City. However, players looking to make things a bit crazier are free to steal a variety of different vehicles and create general chaos and mayhem throughout the city while trying to stay out of the clutches of the police.
Though it lacks a generic highly customizable character like those found in Fallout 3 or Fable II and gives the player relatively few opportunities to change the main plot, GTA IV’s approach to open-ended storytelling allows it to tell a much more moving and character-driven tale than either of those games. And with the large amount of freedom presented to players throughout the rest of their adventures in Liberty City, few if any will complain about the relatively small number of important decisions presented to them in the main plot, making GTA IV an excellent fusion of traditional and player-driven storytelling styles.
The Weaknesses of Open-Ended Stories
The weaknesses of open-ended stories are shared by most highly player-driven forms of storytelling. As with multiple-ending stories and branching path stories, the story can easily lose much of its emotional impact when players know that they can easily go back and try again to get a different (hopefully better) outcome. And, just like in branching path stories, a wrong choice on the player’s part can quickly send the story in a direction that he or she doesn’t like. This is an even more serious problem in open-ended stories, because – as the branching points tend to be less obvious – it can be very difficult for players to figure out where they went wrong and how to change it. This can be helped by giving the player relatively little control over the progress and outcome of the main plot, as in Grand Theft Auto IV, though doing so sacrifices a good deal of the player choice and freedom that are often considered to be the most important part of open-ended storytelling.
As previously mentioned, due to time and budget constraints, the main plots of open-ended stories are often relatively short and simple when compared to those of similar games using less player-driven forms of storytelling. This is due to both the massive amount of time and effort required to create all the different optional activities and branching paths and the fact that the more branches and player choices you add to a story, the harder it becomes to tell a long, complex tale with any sort of proper progression or consistency (something we’ll discuss more in Chapter 13). Whether this is actually a problem depends on developer and player preferences, but it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s extremely difficult – perhaps impossible – to create stories with the depth, complexity, and emotional impact of titles such as FINAL FANTASY VII or Metal Gear Solid 3 using open-ended storytelling.
From a storytelling perspective, the tendency of open-ended stories to feature generic customizable heroes is also a problem. Generic heroes lack not only a defined appearance but a solid personality and backstory as well. Despite players’ ability to customize the hero to their liking, this lack of any sort of defined traits or characteristics makes it extremely difficult for players to truly identify or empathize with the hero. This is the reason that although heroes like Fable II’s Sparrow and Fallout 3’s vault dweller feature a nearly endless number of customization options, you never see them winning any game character popularity polls. As shown by Grand Theft Auto IV, open-ended stories don’t need to rely on generic hero characters; however, having a well-developed main character such as Nico greatly reduces player freedom and control.
Finally, when the player is given so much freedom, it becomes exceedingly difficult to ensure that the story has any sort of proper pacing. You can try to pace the main plot fairly well, but with so many different distractions vying for players’ attention, there’s really no telling where they’ll go and what they’ll do next. It’s not uncommon for players of games with open-ended stories to get so distracted with all the optional activities available that they never even bother to finish the main plot. The fact that, as previously mentioned, most open-ended stories have rather simple main plots doesn’t help in this regard. Even worse, with such large worlds to explore and so many things to do, it can become quite easy for players to lose track of the main plot entirely and wind up unable to figure out how to continue it. Fortunately, most developers have realized that problem and many newer open-ended story games such as Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Fable II feature different ways to ensure that players can always easily find their way to the next important quest or story scene. In some games, however, such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the player is given so much freedom that it’s actually possible for him or her to derail the main plot entirely, making it difficult or even impossible to complete.
Although the large degree of player freedom and control is open-ended storytelling’s biggest strength, as you can see from the problems we just discussed, that very freedom also leads to a host of weaknesses. Some can be reduced or negated with good writing and design; others are an unavoidable part of the style itself that must be kept in mind when creating open-ended stories. In the end, it’s best to keep these weaknesses firmly in mind and emphasize the setting over the main plot and the hero, as open-ended storytelling is far better suited to providing an interesting and detailed world for the player to explore than it is to providing a deep and moving storyline (as evidenced in Chapter 14).
Case Study: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
| Developer: | Bethesda Game Studios |
| Publisher: | ZeniMax Media |
| Writers: | Ken Rolston, Douglas Goodall, Mark Nelson |
| System: | Microsoft Xbox, PC |
| Release Date: | May 1, 2002 (US) |
| Genre: | Action RPG |
FIGURE 10.6
Morrowind presents players with a massive world to explore. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® © 2002 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. All rights reserved.
Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series has always prided itself on providing an extremely high degree of player choice and freedom combined with some of the largest game worlds ever created. This makes the Elder Scrolls games the very epitome of open-ended storytelling. The series began in 1994 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but it was The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind that led to the series’ current popularity, in part due to its release on the original Xbox, on which RPGs of any kind were a rarity.
Large and extremely ambitious, Morrowind places its player-created hero on the large island of Vvardenfell, where he or she is tasked with investigating strange happenings and ensuring the security of the Empire. This soon leads the player to discover the evil plans of the near-immortal Dagoth Ur and his followers. In order to stop them, the hero must fulfill a set of ancient prophecies and become the legendary champion known as the Nerevarine. The prophecies are fairly straightforward (the majority of which involve gaining the support of various factions throughout the island) and the plot never gets any more complex than completing them and gathering the items needed to destroy Dagoth Ur. The majority of these tasks can be completed in any order, and there’s no long, detailed ending when they’re completed. The hero is simply rewarded for his or her efforts and set free to continue exploring Vvardenfell without having to worry about the threat posed by Dagoth Ur and his followers.
The brevity and simplicity of the main plot was frequently cited as one of Morrowind’s weakest points, along with its rather boring battle system and poorly designed journal interface, which made it extremely difficult for players to keep track of the myriad of quests available, thus causing many to lose track of the main plot entirely (an issue that was significantly improved in the first expansion pack, though only in the PC version of the game). Despite all of these problems, Morrowind was mostly well received, due to the vibrancy of its world and the seemingly endless number of optional tasks and activities that the player can undertake.
FIGURE 10.7
The player is free to talk to, help, rob, murder, and otherwise interact with an enormous cast of characters. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® © 2002 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. All rights reserved.
Despite being relatively small when compared to the explorable areas present in the first two Elder Scrolls games, Vvardenfell is a massive island featuring diverse terrain and numerous towns, cities, caverns, and other features to find and explore. From almost the beginning of the game, players are free to roam about the entire island as they please, with the only potential limiting factor being the strength of the monsters that inhabit certain areas. There’s an enormous number of optional quests to find and complete, many of which combine to form short, self-contained stories of their own. Some are quite easy to find; others require traveling to out-of-the-way locales or fulfilling certain stringent requirements before they become available. A few, such as the set of vampire quests, can be almost impossible to trigger unless the player has prior knowledge of their existence and requirements. It’s also possible for the hero to become a member (and eventually leader) of many different factions, all of which feature their own quests, duties, and benefits. Furthermore, the setting itself is extremely well developed, with a diverse cast of characters and over three hundred in-game books (with a combined amount of text equivalent to several full-length novels) from which the player can learn all about the world’s races, history, mythology, religions, and the like. In the end, it’s the island itself, and the vast number of interesting people and places therein, that players most enjoy and remember about Morrowind.
Players in Morrowind are even allowed to derail the main plot entirely. Unlike the other games we’ve discussed in this chapter, Morrowind allows the player to kill any character in the game, no matter how important that character may be to the main plot. In this way, it’s actually possible to render the main plot impossible to complete. Fortunately, there are a few safeguards in place to reduce the chances of this happening. Killing an important NPC causes the game to display a warning message, hinting that the player should reload the game from his or her last save. And as long as the player didn’t kill one specific NPC, there’s an alternate way for him or her to rejoin and complete the main plot, regardless of how many other important characters the player killed, though this alternative path is risky and rather difficult to find. It should be noted that it’s also rather easy for the player to purposely or accidentally incur the wrath of certain factions spread throughout Vvardenfell, which can in turn make certain parts of the game significantly more difficult.
Morrowind will long be remembered for its world and the enormous amount of freedom it gives players. Despite its many faults, it does an excellent job of keeping the focus on its strongest and most enjoyable elements and provides a perfect showcase for all the key strengths and weaknesses of open-ended storytelling.
Open-ended stories provide far more player freedom and control than any of the styles previously discussed. In many ways, they’re similar to highly complex branching path stories, but there is a much heavier emphasis on minor and moderate branches and the decision points tend to be far less obvious and based heavily on the player’s actions rather than a response to a prompt. Many open-ended stories also make use of some sort of morality system that affects the way NPCs react to the hero, though such systems are often easy to manipulate, allowing the player to bounce back and forth between the two extreme ends of the scale almost at will.
Defining features of open-ended storytelling include expansive worlds that the player is free to explore for most of the game and an extremely large number of optional quests and activities he or she can take part in. Because of how much time and attention are spent developing the setting and optional content, the main plot is often deemphasized, with most open-ended stories having relatively short and simple main plots featuring generic player-created heroes. Some games, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, go against this trend, offering deeper plots and well-defined heroes, though doing so sacrifices a considerable amount of the player control and freedom found in other less plot-focused games like Fable II and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Which of these approaches is best is a matter that’s frequently debated and one that we’ll cover more in Chapters 12 through 14, but as a general rule, the more freedom that is given to the player, the less emphasis can be placed on creating a deep, structured, and emotional main plot, and vice versa. Other reasons for this include schedule and budget constraints, as the large amount of optional content required by open-ended stories takes a considerable amount of time and effort to create, leaving far less to spend on other parts of the game and its story.
The freedom offered in open-ended stories is their biggest strength, allowing players to do what they want when they want, and allowing writers to focus on creating highly detailed worlds and settings. However, it’s also their biggest weakness, significantly weakening the structure, pacing, and emotional impact of the main plot and making it easy for players to get lost or sidetracked. In the end, depending on whether you consider player freedom or a well-structured story to be the most important aspect of game writing, open-ended storytelling can be seen as either one of the best or worst styles available.
1. List five games you’ve played that use open-ended stories (if you haven’t played that many, just list the ones you have).
2. Pick two of the games from your list and create simple outlines of their main plots. Compare them to the main plots of the games discussed in your answers to previous chapters’ questions. What differences do you see in their length and structure?
3. Do one or both of those games use a morality system? If so, how does the hero’s morality affect the rest of the game? How easy is it to change the hero’s moral alignment?
4. Pick one of the two games. Do you think the use of an open-ended story structure significantly enhanced or detracted from the game’s main plot? Explain your reasoning.
5. Do you think the use of an open-ended story structure significantly enhanced or detracted from the game’s world and setting? Explain your reasoning.