Thoughts on Narratives

Ever since games moved past the pure skill and guts stage of Contra and the story in games has become increasingly more important. Many times games are even graded down for having a shallow storyline. Some critics may be too hard for expectantly more than two dimensional characters out of every game. Typical stories in video games only serve as an excuse to kill things, jump around on platforms, and solve puzzles. Tetris Plus' story was a professor and his hot anime assistant are trapped in crypt and need to solve puzzles to survive and that’s all it needs, actually, it might have been a little too much story. Not every game is going to have witty dialog and real feeling characters like clerks or anything written by Woody Allen.

This being said, games that focus on story better blood well have good ones. Stories do have rules that need to be fallowed in order to qualify. Plot usually accompanied by a theme or several overtone themes. The plot is what happens. The Animaniacs, as the theme song announces, is about crazy siblings escaping from a water tower. Themes sublet and not so subtle are messages and ideas in the plot that are related to the genre of the story. Genre is the job class of movies and can be predictable because they fit the genre archetype. It isn't a horrible thing, being predictable. In Shakespeare's plays he gave away they end in the opening lines and if that wasn't enough constantly foreshadowed the ending. Tragedy, the protagonist dies-sad. Comedy, everyone gets married- happy mood, any sadness or discomfort from of a character is funny. Drama, about personal character conflict heavy handed with emotion- the mood is usually messy. Good stories have complex characters; they are not completely good, evil, smart, stupid, or any extreme. Like in DnD stats the idea is balance. A story can get away with a larger-than-life character if there is a huge glaring weakness. Superman is not a balanced and could only become balanced if his weakness was something more than magical items and kryptonite. The phrases cookie cutter or two dimensional (that I've used) mean that the character balance is stereotypical or there is no balance like the big strong character that is stupid. The protagonist, often referred to as the hero,

Enough of my expectations, to the point of Grand Theft Auto, The first game was focused on the sandbox. Do what you want and the character won't object because he is a mute pipit to your desires. This worked because in order have an character do the crap that we do in GTA they would have to have almost no character like cloud from GTA3, be a egotistical maniac like in Tommy Verceti, be deprived and conditioned like CJ, or be really Fscked up like Niko.

Sparkly Retro Magic: Part 2

 

Touching back on my previous post, I'd like to summarize what made Mega Man 2 so great. Just like any good story, a video game requires pacing to keep the player interested. Given the limitations of that era's technology, the Mega Man franchise on the NES excelled in continuously interesting the player with new abilities and not revealing too much at any given time. Generally the player was given a single new ability after defeating each level. Of course, there were other ways of pacing the game to reveal just enough at any given point in time, but for a game like Mega Man that had separate levels within a menu structure, a new ability per level was a natural way to maintain player interest.

     Mega Man 2 was also one of the earlier games to exhibit non-linear game progression. As mentioned before, the player was given a variety of levels to choose from in any order they wished. However, defeating a certain boss was usually easier using a certain weapon they were weak against. Navigating levels in Mega Man was not unlike a puzzle- trying different combinations to find the path of least resistance. There is a surprising amount of dpeth to be found in this simplistic structure.

    

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the finest classic examples of fantastic pacing. However the structure is far removed from games like Mega Man. Whereas Mega Man gave you a level menu to choose and rewards you based upon your completion of that level, Zelda gave you an open world- you rely totally on your own exploration skills to find new items and progress. I suppose, in that sense, it is not best to refer to the game's progression as "pacing"- because in reality, the game waits for you to make the decision to progress. A Link to the Past is in my opinion, one of the best Zelda games- because it is a full world, so to speak. At every turn there is new content to interest and engage the player, each new item or event complimenting his overall quest. It never feels broken or disjointed. Rather, the game is an uninterrupted whole from beginning to end in a single, expertly interwoven story. Unless, of course, you can't complete a quest- then you'll run around frantically like a bee with no hive and eventually regress into controller-flinging rage. The temper tantrums are your OCD's fault, though, not Zelda's.

On a related note, is it kosher for me to insult my reader? Oh well, too late.

     If you're interested in purchasing a copy of either of these games, you can find both Mega Man 2 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Wii's Virtual Console. If you're cool, you can also find them on their original consoles.