If you title this video something along the lines of "book writer learns about or reacts to videogame storytelling" , it might do better in the algorithm (just like doctor reacts, rappers react, lawyer and so on)
@@HannaHsOverInvested Since you are a book writer, may i suggest walk away from the tiresome "medieval age" trope. Why not native american fantasy (like cree with magic, crushing greedy caucasians)
@@sanhcman666 well, since my novels are set in the near future and a sumerian goddess is one of the most powerful characters, I think I'm on an okay track.
Bioshock I hold up as the gold standard of environmental story telling. And the developers knew it, literally. They designed an entire city to be in, you're literally in a custom environment entirely of their making. Every detail was used deliberately, chekhov gun style. If you're gonna have a park bench in an sealed greenhouse, show people having a picnic. If you're gonna have discarded baby strollers, show mothers concerned about their babies. Everything had a place to build Rapture into a living, breathing character in it's own right. Wonderful game, highly recommend.
i love that dichotomy of hannah being a writer, being appreciative of all the environment and story telling and absolutely not giving a shit about any of that while shes playing. If its comforting, caring about all that extra stuff is easier as you get better at games. When game play is mostly routine, you have more mental space left for appreciating those other parts of games. For me ive had platforming games in my life since before i had memories so its easy for me to appreciate all the little stuff in those games. For someone thats struggling to make their way across a room, that story is not gonna be at the top of their concerns
Totally this, it took me a while to realize that as a new gamer more mental space is used to just learning the mechanical part and taking pleasure on overcoming the challenges the games provide mechanically and not caring much about the other stuff. Still, as an author I still hope for her to try more story heavy games that don't require gaming skills but to be immersed in the game world.
12:39 Deus ex human revolution outsourced its boss fights to another studio and they didn’t really get that the game allowed you to play rush in guns blazing or sneaky stealthy. So they built the boss fights with that in mind and made a typical action boss fight. So it does happen. Final fantasy 13 had an issue where the team making the cutscenes and the level designers weren’t actively communicating and that caused some issues too
Hey Hannah, to answer your deus ex question, why people would augment themselves, is basically what the previous game human revolution was about. Basically a golden age of augs, some jobs literally had it in the contract that you had to get new arms. Mankind divided deals with the fallout of HR
To go into more detail and kinda give a bit of a spoiler, the people with augments worldwide in the previous deus ex at the end of the game were hacked enmasse and were forced to go on violent killing sprees against there will, friends attacked friends and parents even attacked there own children and because they were augmented you can imagine it was a bloodbath. by the end of it all after the hack was undone, the augmented people of the world went from rich upper class citizens to being completely distrusted and shunned by greater society, draconian laws were put into place to segregate them in the interest of public safety and because the people who were un-augmented previously felt oppressed because they were denied job opportunities due to lack of augments and just a better standard of living during the golden age of augmentation and automation, they gleefully took part in physically oppressing the people who they viewed as previously financially oppressing them.
I was so happy to see how enthusiastic and engaged you were! It's so nice hearing you talk with such passion about writing while really connecting and dissecting the information from the video. Took me a moment to realize I was smiling while watching along lol.
Really amazing. As I was playing today I was thinking of the video and seeing how what he was talking about was actually practically used. It was so cool
12:35 This miscommunication does happen sometimes. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution (the third Deus Ex game), the developers themselves created the bulk of the game, but they outsourced the boss fights to another company so they could be developed simultaneously. This backfired because they failed to explain one of the key design philosophies to the second team: despite being a shooter, Deus Ex is famous as a series for giving players the ability to beat the game without killing a single enemy using stealth, hacking, and conversation skills. Players (including myself) got a bit angry and confused when we tried to do pacifist runs through Human Revolution only to find that there was no way to get past the bosses without killing them.
"Does that mean there are games that are made poorly and if the people doing the different levels don't communicate well, there are huge shifts between one level to the next?" Yes, it is called Mass Effect 3. The lead writer and director locked themselves away to write the ending which is completely invalidated by multiple major plot points written by the other writers earlier in the game. Also, the "rival" character, Kai Leng, created by the lead writer was very clearly hated by every other writer so he just gets his ass handed to him in all of his appearances, and never comes off as a threat. Mass Effect 3 is a great example of "What if the creative team didn't communicate well and hated each other?"
Kai leng only losses the final battle he murders than and kicks your ass in the only other fight u have with him so dude you from a parellel universe or you lying to make some dumb criticism
I'd heartily recommend the game "Journey." Never played it myself, because it's on one of those heathen consoles, but I know how much it has emotionally enriched many people.
@@HannaHsOverInvested absolutely second this! Journey is a short and simple game, but full of character and beauty. If you would want to play it on a stream, it can be done in one sitting of a few hours. The music is fantastic and the full soundtrack was the first game soundtrack to be nominated for a Grammy award.
The artistic side, anyway. GMTK focus's much more on games as an artistic product, though he dabbles in the technical aspects. Extra credits is another good channel for game designers. They're best for the tradeoffs and implications of game mechanics. I'm not sure I know any good game dev UA-camrs that cover technical aspects so thoroughly and holistically, especially since fewer and fewer people are writing their engines anymore.
I like Design Doc, too. They're sometime a little too high-concept in their videos, but there are really great ones among their many. (And their "Good Design Bad Design" series is good for a laugh, too.)
Hey Hannah! I know this is a few months old but I really enjoyed this more “academic” approach, connecting your storytelling experience to your experiences with video games. I’d definitely recommend Journey he mentioned, it’s more of an “interactive experience” than a traditional game and can be played through in probably an hour. It’s also fun to hear you talk about going to hard on worldbuilding. I play a lot of D&D, etc. and the best advice I ever got was “Draw maps, leave blanks.” You need just enough of an outline to provide structure to the world, but you also wanna leave plenty of room to adjust things as you’re roleplaying through it. Or in a writer’s case, actually writing the story.
Just seeing the title of this, & speaking only for me. I'm glad you are seeing something like this that goes into how storytelling has evolved so much.
As someone who literally can't remember a time before they had access to a computer, I feel your pain. Computers don't like me, so everything I know about them I learned as a result of the frequent and varied issues they spontaneously develop in my presence. The last time my computer broke, I told a good friend of mine, and his only responce was, "Why is it always like this with you?"
12:35 Yes. There's a UA-camr by the name of MandaloreGaming and he made a review of a game called Thief: The Dark Project. Much of the levels in Thief 1 were more or less the level designers experimenting in what the gameplay was truly about. It's a decent game but you could tell they were shifting around with the gameplay loop from stealth to action from one level to the next. By the time you reach Thief 2, the gameplay is more refined and focused primarily around stealth and avoiding combat as much as possible.
It's very important in development for the various teams to talk to each other and make sure everything is going to plan, which is why there tends to be a lot of meetings involved for group heads. moreover, there have been instances where individual groups on a dev team, or even specific individuals can infer things about other sections of the project through their workspace environment, or their own quotas. This has to interesting situations, such as a developer knowing the game is going to do poorly, but sink a ton of effort into getting to their particular part to work the best it can, so they can put it on their resume, and not have had their work time be wasted.
Titanfall 2 is a great example of separate teams making each level. They all tie together narratively, but they play almost like a genre switch each time you start the next level without giving the player whiplash. Perhaps one to add to your to-play pile! :)
One final comment to appease the ever-hungering Algorithm: For what it's worth, I think you would really enjoy BioShock Infinite. The first BioShock has some of the best storytelling in the industry, but it's very deliberately paced... closer to being an RPG than the overtly action power-fantasy Infinite.
I have to say I hated Bioshock Infinite because the world is built out like it's supposed to have depth but if you push the boundaries it feels like a card board cut out. Maybe I'm spoiled having played Deus Ex games but I jumped into it with high hopes having really enjoyed the first Bioshock, but there seemed to be some storyline early on that paralleled the underground railroad where they were trying to rescue these slaves and I pressed the wrong button and killed some freed slaves and no one reacted, in the first Deus Ex back in 2000, yes the year 2000 not that decade, if you just randomly killed an pedestrian or something people would freak out, they might pull a gun or cower in fear, and in this game, nothing. It was as if nothing happened, the magic had died for me, I never finished it because it left such a bad taste in my mouth.
@@RobotsWithKnivesCartoons I don't see how playing one game can make you hate another. For example, Dark Souls and Doom 2016 are about as deep and interesting as a muddy puddle, but I still enjoyed them based on their own merits. I don't hate them because they're not as good as The Witcher III or Hedon. Deus Ex and Infinite are very different games.
18:39 I was SO sure Bioware somehow forgot to put enemies in the Krogan catacombs. The area felt perfect for fighting off enemy ambush on Insanity (barely any cover, combat by torchlight, dead end rooms).
6:22 the thing is, I’m naturally good at filling space with stuff… cause I have adhd and notice that kinda stuff constantly… but because it’s such a natural thing for me to do, it’s also easy for me to get TOO uniform, complacent, and efficient. I end up deciding against making things too crowded, but then I trim the clutter too much when I step back and take another look, it just feels barren.
12:28 It happens really rarely. For example, in recent Assassin's creed games they have a HUGE map and then they split it so several teams work on their area of the map. And you can literally feel the difference between them in quality and excitement
To answer your question about poor transitions, Dark Souls 2 has a notorious example due to cut content; you climb up to the top of a windmill on a mountaintop and then at the end somehow take an elevator UP into a volcanic area, as if there was a volcano floating above the mountain. From early cg trailers it seems there was supposed to be a kinda valley you had to pass through to between both zones that didnt make it into the game
A lot of times when games are organized well, there will be a lead for design/art direction that will work with each individual team to make sure that every level has a similar narrative/environmental feel that they are going for.
I feel like I have the exact same struggle with my writing. I love character development and interaction, I can do that all day. But, if I'm not careful, I can forget to actually develop the surroundings/setting. I'm just really drawn to making people. For me, that's where all the fun is. Building characters, and seeing what happens when I throw them at each other.
Great video. I appreciated the tip about how you write dialogue too. If you want more channels that focus on the narrative side of games I'd recommend "Games as Literature" and "Noah Caldwell Gervais". Though Noah's videos are massive. Basically mini-documentaries about the history, content, and story of game series. Despite their length they're well thought out and edited.
12:34. Yes, thats exactly what it means. While correlation does not mean causation - internal problems, monetary issues or poor time management can be seen in games. The most common case running low on time so the beginning of the game can be packed full of detail and character, while it starts to teter off at midgame culminating at a rushed endgame. Dark souls 1 comes to mind instantly for this.
GMTK has been one of my favourite creator for the past few years. If you are taking suggestions for more stuff from him, some of my choices would be "Morality in the Mechanics" and "The World Design of Hollow Knight"
Please play the yakuza series!! The characters, stories, and world building are so amazing and uniquely done. I've never seen anything like it and want more people to experience it
I feel the worldbuilding struggle! Worldbuilding is important, but man it hurts sometimes to acknowledge that my reader just won’t care most of the time. That said, it’s essential to worldbuild to keep things consistent and to give yourself a toolbox to help build the story. It goes both ways.
One of the best-written villains in any videogame is Emet Selch. He appears in an expansion of Final Fantasy 14, and they pay homage to Bioshock (the game in this video). Emet flamboyantly steals every scene he is in, his backstory is fleshed-out, he's relatable (his motivations are similar to yours), and he even wants to be your friend. Check him out if you want to see a really good villain.
16:05 - on the note of linearity in the Mass Effect franchise, the first game is very free-form and open-world. You can go anywhere and explore at your own pace. The second and third games also have this to an extent, but they're much more mission-focused in smaller semi-linear levels with a higher emphasis on engaging combat gameplay. 1 is a very different experience to subsequent games which is why there's very distinct fan crowds for 1 and 'the rest'
One thing I've learned about worldbuilding from running Dungeons & Dragons games is that it doesn't matter how much work you put into worldbuilding, your players are only going to see 5% of it, at best. So all that work you put in will go completely unseen. I imagine this holds true for any other world development, since the only thing the audience will ever see is what's in front of them. The usual advice gamemasters get is to decide the basic framework of the world based on themes, but only bothering with the details for locations that the characters are at or talking about/relevant to the story. It's interesting how much of this stuff is really just general writing advice, and not really specific to any particular medium of storytelling. The parts that make video games and tabletop roleplaying tricky is simply that the writer doesn't have any control over the "audience" (the players).
Some of the absolute best environmental storytelling in modern gaming can be found in Ready or Not. Some absolutely brilliant work from the devs. It's a game about the work police have to do, so some scenes get pretty dark, but as the player making some of those connections absolutely shakes you to your core
12:38 To answer the question, yeah, if there's no overarching art direction and co-ordination between the level designers and overall design. That usually tells of bigger troubles within the company too though. In Bioshock style games the level designers need to work closely with art team to still have a sort of consistent feel to the environment, whereas their own input affects the feel of the section and might have some goals that need to be fulfilled on the game's higher level.
Hannah, I loved this and your monster Hunter reaction video! I would recommend you would watch the trailers for the first game and the monster ecology videos. There is also one video called “Monster Hunter: A Culture of Danger” which gives you the general story or theme that the trailers don’t tell you.
I think a lot of people underestimate what goes in to making a video game because they know nothing of the process. All games are such massive, collaborative undertakings, but unless you're actually there while something is developed, or you specifically seek out this info, you don't comprehend the massive scale of creation and thought that goes in to literally everything you see and do. Because it all has to be built from scratch, basically.
I feel that "high level" and "low level" might have been presented in a confusing way in the video. The way I was taught is to think of high and low in terms of altitude, and this informs the types of details and attention given. An eagle soaring high above a beach doesn't care about navigating individual pebbles, but an ant crawling on the crowd _must_ concern itself with the pebbles. So, counterintuitively, "high level" is usually also "foundational". A story's overall setting, such as an entire country, is a "high level" perspective, whereas the individual street or house where the protagonist grew up is a "low level" perspective. Of course, these terms are relative. For example in the TV show Bones, it is a high level perspective that FBI agents wear suits. It is a lower level perspective that the deuteragonist Booth wears colorful socks and prominent belt buckles. As for the way that teams come together and try to not make a mismatched overall product, I think it's best to think of game production as similar to film production. In a well-organized team, there will be a director or supervisor that has the authority and responsibility to keep things consistent, and to be the unifying voice which coordinates with different departments. Put differently, because Marvel Studios has Kevin Feige, the movies more-or-less work in-concert and have brand consistency, whereas Warner Brothers did no such thing with the DCEU, so the films vary wildly in tone and quality. The same can be true of games.
Welcome back. For a positive vibe, consider that for most things electronic there is hope in making them work until the smoke escapes. A heretic tech priest once told me that electronics run on smoke. That's why they stop when it gets out. Be kind to your light and maybe it's machine spirits will want to be friends instead. :)
ii hope you'll try Journey, as he said in the video, no words are spoken in that game and yet its amazing. And can be finished in a single stream. (In including moonwalking time)
It's wonderful to see you falling down this rabbit hole of how games have become a storytelling medium. Hopefully videos like this encourage you to try playing even the notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls or Sekiro because those have a very different way of conveying the stories of their worlds compared to even other games of the same genres. And then you have the even weirder ones like NieR Automata with its strange structure, meta, 4th wall breaks, and philosophical themes. Those are the reason it's still being discussed by the vast majority of people who've played it, beyond just the appealing character designs.
Ah worldbuilding, the wonderful timesink I learned to avoid when I was running D&D. It's enjoyable to make a rich world, but your audience only cares about the parts they'll interact with or see. As for the content that GMTK put forward, it's very good. I'll check out that channel and hopefully it also helps both my writing and game making plans.
Heya, Hannah. Love all your stuff! I just wanted to recommend a game. It has a super easy interface, so anyone can pick it up immediately. It's Telltale's The Walking Dead Games series. Literally one of the best and well written game series ever. Severely underrated. Telltale as a whole has some great games and their main purgative is creating games with well written stories. Stay awesome!
Sometimes, a game can feel very tonally different from level to level. A great example from ANCIENT HISTORY is Doom 2. Some levels were great, most were fine and some were an absolute turd-salsa of utter garbage.
Even more in halo 1 combat evolved. I mean, the first levels are very generic, kill aliens with weapons. But as soon the swamp level starts, you inmediately feel something is off. And the next level, about the library ( i cant go to any library, even in my own house, at night, anymore) really created micro PTSD on many halo fans.
@@sanhcman666 There's a great, atmospheric section in Star Trek: Republic Commando when you lead your squad onto the Prosecutor. Very different from the rest of the game.
@@AndrewD8Red Star wars, you mean. Star trek has very few games. Still, i prefer star trek than star wars. Its tiresome the cowboys in space against nazis, with lame samuraies I prefer SOCIALIST ideas (i know gringos are allergic to that)
@@sanhcman666 Believe it or not, Star Trek has more video game adaptions than any other franchise, including Star Wars. ... Now, if we're just talking about *good* video game adaptions, then yes; Star Wars is the definite winner.
@@sanhcman666 I completely agree with you about the superiority of the Space Socialism show over the Space Cowboy / Wizard-Ninja Movies, too. ... You got me worried I'm giving off "I'm American" vibes though.
@12:26 Yes. But I suspect unfortunate outcomes like that are more common when production teams change mid project, or in a pinching combination of scope creep and time constraints.
11:29 * minor spoilers for Deus Ex* In the first game people were getting augs to improve themselves/adapt to their jobs/fix injuries etc. The Illuminati wanted to control them, and secretly updated their software to control them, but one of the Illuminati wanted to stop them and stop augmentation, so he made the augs to crazy instead. Millions died in the "aug incident" leading to their oppression in the 2nd game.
Sending good vibes to your lights! Bioshock 1 is still my favourite game, after 15 years. It also has a novel written about the backstory if you're interested, it's called "BioShock: Rapture", but either way it's a great game with an interesting story full of twists and turns.
12:27 I would argue Dark Souls 2 is an example of this. The conection between levels makes absolutely no sense. Like how you climb up a windmill in a valley of poison, and at the top there is...an Iron castle surrounded by lava?
12:26 If you're really interested (and have the time for it) I highly recommend SovietWomble's video essay on The Forest. It illustrates quite well how a lack of overhead planning when writing a game's story (and failing to take other aspects of the game into account) could lead to a terribly disjointed narrative. It's something like three hours long, so be warned, but I think you'd find it fascinating. Come to think of it, you could even stream watching it sometime.
**Sends positive vibes like there is no tomorrow** I think yes to world-building, but do not go overboard and let it hamper you from actually writing a good story. A good story is the main focus, and the world-building is there to make sure it doesn't fall apart when scrutinized. The best games I have played have made me want to write. Thief, Dishonored, etc. Not only because their worlds were so fascinating, but because they seemed true and was backed up by the graphics (now...graphics differ from back in the day to now, but still).
The Last Guardian on Playstation is a masterclass in minimalist storytelling imo. Pathologic and Pathalogic 2 by Ice-Pick Lodge are fascinating from a story telling point of view, absolutely worth a closer look. And in the new Hitman Agent 47 doesn't have a barcode on the back of his neck, he has a QR code.
I totally recommend you to play Journey! And Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. All games where amazing storytelling is in focus, without the challenge of difficult gameplay in the way (especially Edith Finch uses gameplay to tell the story in a great way).
It does happen yes. For the most part though games have an overall game designer and qa playtesters that make sure all the levels are good. Kind of like how lead animators make sure all the other animators are keeping characters on model.
Using said in writing: It's fine for exposition, or if you don't expect to be doing an audiobook version. When reading, you tend to almost jump over the word and move on to the next bit, but when listening to an audiobook, it becomes really obvious when you overuse the word said. The narrator says it every time, and repeated use of the same phrase is very noticeable. It's not as bad when you do it like, "he said while doing something relevant to the scene." That being said, you can add so much more emotional context by using more descriptive tags like, "he stated calmly," or "he barked angrily." The best way to think of it is the more important the scene, the less you use "said." You want the reader to get a clearer picture of what's going on, without slowing the pace. Descriptive or action tags fill in detail without needing an extra paragraph to fill the reader in on what the characters are doing in between exchanges.
The Intensity Scale... P.G. Wodehouse plotted his stories like a wavelength graph that oscillated between Serious and Silly. If a scene ever went too far in either direction, he'd rewrite it to maintain the consistent tone.
Fallout 3 , New Vegas, and 4 are really good examples of how items , skelatons and bodys tell a story, allo stesso every location has items and skelatons specificarlo placed so that it kinda shows what was going on the moment the bombs fell or sometimes what happened recently, like in fallout 3 there is a wall outside a bunker with a Mans shadow burned into the wall next to the bunker door, later if you go to underworld a ghoul there tells you how her father was caught in the blast when hè was checking if the coast was clear. Then theres the plunger room also which shows the most confusing thing where apparently a man tried to use plungers to reach the cealing so the walls are covered in plungers with a skeleton and blood in the centre of the room, thus you know what happened to him
Regarding your question regarding shifts between levels, yes and no. And that’s not necessarily limited to just bad or poorly made games. It’s rarer in good games and usually has a distinct reason for the disconnect. For example, Halo has a lot of disconnected environments, but there’s a reason for that. Different parts of the story happen in vastly different areas. And then all kinds chaos and shifts happen when the Flood get unleashed. Not only do different Halo levels happen in vastly different areas with a Halo, some games don’t even have the majority of the plot on a single Halo. Halo 2 has stuff in a space station, stuff on Earth, stuff on both on and in a Halo installation, Covenant ship, Orbital installation around a gas giant, etc. And you see the story of the main campaign spin out from the perspective of Master Chief and The Arbiter (a disgraced Covenant Elite with a different play style from Master Chief). Or the Mass Effect series. Different planets and locations set up different types of missions, different landscapes, sights, types of settlements, problems, etc. They all feel different and distinct. But even if some planets and conflicts don’t need to be resolved and are disconnected from the main plot, they still offer experiences, some of which may affect public perception of your Shepard through the original trilogy (though it won’t affect things for Mass Effect Andromeda, since you’re not Shepard in that one). A really good game with disconnected level design usually treats the disconnect as a bit of a puzzle until you either see what is going on or the design conceit or plot twist is revealed.
Great video, I think Valve is the king at environmental storytelling I suggest u a video from GMTK called "Valve's secret weapon" where he talks more in depth about how Valve makes its games
"Why do people get augmented?" In the last game, Human Revolution it was pretty normal, your own character gets hurt really badly and only being heavily augmented saved his life. other people just got fancy prosthetics that they needed or perhaps get augmented to do better at what they want to do or perhaps just because. An event I don't wish to spoil for you, happens at the end of that game that's out of the augmented people's control but made everyone else in the world basically afraid it might happen again someday. Therefore Mankind Divided starts out with mankind divided in that sense ;3
The question that you asked is even deeper that your initial formuation: Yes there is dissoance between levels that are developed by different people, especially if the game was rushed. Sometimes to a level that it forces to play counterintuitive to a story beat. The other part of this is that the gameplay interacts with that system too. Sometimes the level design wants to suggest a functioning society but stealing things has no consequence/or low consequence so the entire place feels lawless, especially if stealing stuff makes you strong. Sometimes you are supposed to be a stealth character but your costume sticks out like a sore thumb (Assassins creed). This all can snowball really fast into either direction, where in one hub of the world everything works together quite nicely and in another everything feels meaningless (Bioshock Infinites mid game point in the prison is a great example of this). Edit: also recommendations for environmental story telling: Journey, Limbo and Playdead's Inside
You should definitely play Journey. It's BEAUTIFUL, and such a cool story, told as they said without a single word. The most you get are pictograms on walls that you have to interpret on your own. There's no dialogue, no text, nothing. Just the occasional mural on a wall. There's also Sky: Children of Light, which is a free to play online game that's very similar in style to Journey. It's very cute and has a super fun environment with all kinds of things to read into and try and understand. There are spirit stones you activate and have to follow the echo of a spirit through a small journey of some kind. Some are beautiful, some are sad, it's all really cool!
I am surprised the video didn't mention Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Those are big in using the environment and other indirect means to tell a story.
25:25 "how can I now implement environmental aspects into descriptions in a way that the reader won't notice" Sunless Sea does this best. It does "show, don't tell" like no other game (or "tell, don't show", since games show while Sunless Sea tells). Other games may have a better story or storytelling, but Sunless Sea has the best literary writing.
If you are interested in seeing a masterclass of environmental storytelling, you should check out Outer Wilds (not to be confused with the Bethesda rpg Outer Worlds). If you do them make sure you play through the base game before interacting with the game's excellent DLC.
12:40 water levels. Just, water levels. You will see no greater shift, no larger rift in experience, than when you are forced by the game to plunge into a water level. But usually doesnt happen, since games are LOOOOONG proyects, planning is usually the first thing that happens
I'm also a writer, but more of a journalist and travel writer. One of my big breakthroughs was learning how to use literary devices only in ways that are necessary. I think a big problem in modern writing is that people will overuse metaphors where they're not needed or use too-vague language to sound poetic. I think writing should be precise and that literary devices should aid that precision instead of making it more vague. I know this doesn't pertain to video games, but I'm curious whether or not you agree. I never took any classes so I've been figuring this process out myself over the years. It always helps to bounce things off of other writers.
12:36 That is a problem in many games! Writing is historically undervalued in games, because it requires very little technical expertise compared to the rest of the game-making process, and if things are disjointed enough, some games begin to tear apart at the seems. Mass Effect 3 has a lot wrong with it, but one of the issues is that each chapter of the game is focused on a single planet's fate in a galaxy-wide war, with the larger war hanging in the background and serving as the main story between planets. Each planet had its own writer who was responsible for its storyline. The problem is that no single writer knew how the main story would end, because it was re-written several times. This becomes obvious near the end when the game starts to re-tread themes it already explored and closed the book on and starts to backtrack and contradict earlier thematic points. Mass Effect is a lovely series, but they got messier and messier as they went on, and you could see a series built on strong writing start to not value its writers.
Some world builders do just write world building for fun, the might what to write a story in their world after some time but it can be either way around.
I'm a bit late to the party, but I need to throw in a request for ye ol' hyperfixation Frostpunk. I don't wanna spoil too much about it, but it's an amazing game with amazing trailers and a sequel on the way, plus, Bricky made a video covering it.
Telling the mood through the setting in books: I like to do as many things as possible with as little as possible. Readers do like to have a clear picture of the setting to avoid the white room, but I read Tolkien, and he gives huge, page long descriptions of setting, and it's just too much. I found the best way to do it is to give a fairly short and basic description of the setting, then add more as the characters involved interact in the setting. Meeting in a cheap motel, then having the characters try to find somewhere to sit down that doesn't have a stain, or even ignore the stains and sit anyway and you can use the setting to show what kind of characters they are. The germophobe would refuse to sit and carefully not touch anything. The exhausted character wouldn't care and just sit wherever. Just thought of this wording - the setting is another character in the scene. Characters in the same scene interact and affect each other.
What makes video game writing so special and so difficult to master is that the writer isn't in control of how the story is told. It's entirely possible that the player will turn around, look at a wall for a while, then put the controller down and never return. The writing must be engaging enough to convince the player to follow along while also giving some breathing room for impromptu audience input.
I find it funny how you home in on the agent's barcode. I wonder if the dev had a conversation about how that barcode would show up on someone who wasn't pale white.
Regarding world building: There are creators that build cathedrals, and creators that build scaffolds. The former derive joy from making intricate, beautiful, expansive, complete places for their minds to inhabit. I'm a scaffolder. I'm painting a beautiful picture (the story and it's characters) and I need a place sturdy enough to hang it so that it looks plausible and believable. I build my worlds just enough to hang the story on so it makes sense and the place looks real. Too much more feels wasteful and loses my interest rapidly
I stumbled upon one old game trailer and realized that you need more of the good old Warhammer, like from the 2000s youtube video name Warhammer - Mark Of Chaos - Trailer [HD] - BGMA Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer 2
If you title this video something along the lines of "book writer learns about or reacts to videogame storytelling" , it might do better in the algorithm (just like doctor reacts, rappers react, lawyer and so on)
THANK YOU!!
@@HannaHsOverInvested Since you are a book writer, may i suggest walk away from the tiresome "medieval age" trope.
Why not native american fantasy (like cree with magic, crushing greedy caucasians)
@@sanhcman666 well, since my novels are set in the near future and a sumerian goddess is one of the most powerful characters, I think I'm on an okay track.
Jo, this literally just worked on me! Also awesome video, and now you've got a new sub :)
@@Maestr0ne
Welcome to the growing clan of Hannah's Heathens.
Bioshock I hold up as the gold standard of environmental story telling.
And the developers knew it, literally. They designed an entire city to be in, you're literally in a custom environment entirely of their making. Every detail was used deliberately, chekhov gun style. If you're gonna have a park bench in an sealed greenhouse, show people having a picnic. If you're gonna have discarded baby strollers, show mothers concerned about their babies.
Everything had a place to build Rapture into a living, breathing character in it's own right. Wonderful game, highly recommend.
Same with the metro 2033 games. So damn good!!!
Personally I think half life 2 is peak fame design
i love that dichotomy of hannah being a writer, being appreciative of all the environment and story telling and absolutely not giving a shit about any of that while shes playing. If its comforting, caring about all that extra stuff is easier as you get better at games. When game play is mostly routine, you have more mental space left for appreciating those other parts of games. For me ive had platforming games in my life since before i had memories so its easy for me to appreciate all the little stuff in those games. For someone thats struggling to make their way across a room, that story is not gonna be at the top of their concerns
I cared about that stuff in the last of us!
Totally this, it took me a while to realize that as a new gamer more mental space is used to just learning the mechanical part and taking pleasure on overcoming the challenges the games provide mechanically and not caring much about the other stuff. Still, as an author I still hope for her to try more story heavy games that don't require gaming skills but to be immersed in the game world.
Actually very well put.
12:39 Deus ex human revolution outsourced its boss fights to another studio and they didn’t really get that the game allowed you to play rush in guns blazing or sneaky stealthy.
So they built the boss fights with that in mind and made a typical action boss fight.
So it does happen. Final fantasy 13 had an issue where the team making the cutscenes and the level designers weren’t actively communicating and that caused some issues too
Journey was short, breathtaking, emotional, and nothing short of breathtaking. So much story that can be suggested from just the environment.
Also absolutely groundbreaking and innovative for it's time in many aspects. Music, multiplayer, environmental storytelling, sand tech.
Hey Hannah, to answer your deus ex question, why people would augment themselves, is basically what the previous game human revolution was about. Basically a golden age of augs, some jobs literally had it in the contract that you had to get new arms. Mankind divided deals with the fallout of HR
OHHHHH interesting
Why wouldn't someone want tank treads for legs, and a hydraulic claw for an arm? That's badass.
@@aregulargamer1when you can't get into a building cause it's not made to house a miniature tank.
To go into more detail and kinda give a bit of a spoiler, the people with augments worldwide in the previous deus ex at the end of the game were hacked enmasse and were forced to go on violent killing sprees against there will, friends attacked friends and parents even attacked there own children and because they were augmented you can imagine it was a bloodbath. by the end of it all after the hack was undone, the augmented people of the world went from rich upper class citizens to being completely distrusted and shunned by greater society, draconian laws were put into place to segregate them in the interest of public safety and because the people who were un-augmented previously felt oppressed because they were denied job opportunities due to lack of augments and just a better standard of living during the golden age of augmentation and automation, they gleefully took part in physically oppressing the people who they viewed as previously financially oppressing them.
I was so happy to see how enthusiastic and engaged you were! It's so nice hearing you talk with such passion about writing while really connecting and dissecting the information from the video. Took me a moment to realize I was smiling while watching along lol.
Awww that is so nice to hear! Thank you 🙏🏼
Game Makers Toolkit would hold the Professor's chair for game design, if there was one. A great teacher.
Really amazing. As I was playing today I was thinking of the video and seeing how what he was talking about was actually practically used. It was so cool
@@HannaHsOverInvested Yup. We've come extremely far since the day programmers and designers would throw stuff at the wall to see what'd stick.
12:35 This miscommunication does happen sometimes. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution (the third Deus Ex game), the developers themselves created the bulk of the game, but they outsourced the boss fights to another company so they could be developed simultaneously. This backfired because they failed to explain one of the key design philosophies to the second team: despite being a shooter, Deus Ex is famous as a series for giving players the ability to beat the game without killing a single enemy using stealth, hacking, and conversation skills. Players (including myself) got a bit angry and confused when we tried to do pacifist runs through Human Revolution only to find that there was no way to get past the bosses without killing them.
This channel is such a great recomendation for you. GMTK does a good job laying out the techniques found in games ina thoughtfull way.
"Does that mean there are games that are made poorly and if the people doing the different levels don't communicate well, there are huge shifts between one level to the next?" Yes, it is called Mass Effect 3. The lead writer and director locked themselves away to write the ending which is completely invalidated by multiple major plot points written by the other writers earlier in the game. Also, the "rival" character, Kai Leng, created by the lead writer was very clearly hated by every other writer so he just gets his ass handed to him in all of his appearances, and never comes off as a threat.
Mass Effect 3 is a great example of "What if the creative team didn't communicate well and hated each other?"
Kai leng only losses the final battle he murders than and kicks your ass in the only other fight u have with him so dude you from a parellel universe or you lying to make some dumb criticism
But people have been telling me that Mass effect 3 is so good
Did I imagine that?
@@HannaHsOverInvested No, Mass Effect 3 is really good. It's a very solid entry full of great character arcs and set pieces.
@@HannaHsOverInvested mass effect 3 is good some people hate it be ause the first endings were just color filters they updated the endings tho
I'd heartily recommend the game "Journey."
Never played it myself, because it's on one of those heathen consoles, but I know how much it has emotionally enriched many people.
Noted!
It is on steam. So computers are an option.
@@ODDnanref
Problem is, I've seen two playthroughs now. I think the magic would have faded if I play it myself.
Ori and the Blind Forest is another feels-inducing one you'd enjoy.
@@HannaHsOverInvested absolutely second this! Journey is a short and simple game, but full of character and beauty. If you would want to play it on a stream, it can be done in one sitting of a few hours. The music is fantastic and the full soundtrack was the first game soundtrack to be nominated for a Grammy award.
The game maker toolkit is actually a good channel to understand game development for beginners.
You know the basics of game dev
The artistic side, anyway. GMTK focus's much more on games as an artistic product, though he dabbles in the technical aspects. Extra credits is another good channel for game designers. They're best for the tradeoffs and implications of game mechanics. I'm not sure I know any good game dev UA-camrs that cover technical aspects so thoroughly and holistically, especially since fewer and fewer people are writing their engines anymore.
I like Design Doc, too. They're sometime a little too high-concept in their videos, but there are really great ones among their many. (And their "Good Design Bad Design" series is good for a laugh, too.)
@@colemanroberts1102 Yes, It's very helpful
@@valmoer Yep
Hey Hannah! I know this is a few months old but I really enjoyed this more “academic” approach, connecting your storytelling experience to your experiences with video games. I’d definitely recommend Journey he mentioned, it’s more of an “interactive experience” than a traditional game and can be played through in probably an hour.
It’s also fun to hear you talk about going to hard on worldbuilding. I play a lot of D&D, etc. and the best advice I ever got was “Draw maps, leave blanks.” You need just enough of an outline to provide structure to the world, but you also wanna leave plenty of room to adjust things as you’re roleplaying through it. Or in a writer’s case, actually writing the story.
Just seeing the title of this, & speaking only for me. I'm glad you are seeing something like this that goes into how storytelling has evolved so much.
As someone who literally can't remember a time before they had access to a computer, I feel your pain. Computers don't like me, so everything I know about them I learned as a result of the frequent and varied issues they spontaneously develop in my presence. The last time my computer broke, I told a good friend of mine, and his only responce was, "Why is it always like this with you?"
12:35
Yes.
There's a UA-camr by the name of MandaloreGaming and he made a review of a game called Thief: The Dark Project. Much of the levels in Thief 1 were more or less the level designers experimenting in what the gameplay was truly about. It's a decent game but you could tell they were shifting around with the gameplay loop from stealth to action from one level to the next. By the time you reach Thief 2, the gameplay is more refined and focused primarily around stealth and avoiding combat as much as possible.
Watched that Mandalore video recently, actually.
I've been on a Mandalore/Civvie/Ruby Ranger binge recently.
It's very important in development for the various teams to talk to each other and make sure everything is going to plan, which is why there tends to be a lot of meetings involved for group heads.
moreover, there have been instances where individual groups on a dev team, or even specific individuals can infer things about other sections of the project through their workspace environment, or their own quotas.
This has to interesting situations, such as a developer knowing the game is going to do poorly, but sink a ton of effort into getting to their particular part to work the best it can, so they can put it on their resume, and not have had their work time be wasted.
I really want to see you play through Portal some day c: One of the best stories in gaming and its relatively simple.
comment for the algorithm. Also, been watching since Non-gamer started and I love GMTK reactions! Do more please! :)
Titanfall 2 is a great example of separate teams making each level. They all tie together narratively, but they play almost like a genre switch each time you start the next level without giving the player whiplash. Perhaps one to add to your to-play pile! :)
Its crazy that Titanfall 2 managed to be so good
One final comment to appease the ever-hungering Algorithm:
For what it's worth, I think you would really enjoy BioShock Infinite. The first BioShock has some of the best storytelling in the industry, but it's very deliberately paced... closer to being an RPG than the overtly action power-fantasy Infinite.
I have to say I hated Bioshock Infinite because the world is built out like it's supposed to have depth but if you push the boundaries it feels like a card board cut out. Maybe I'm spoiled having played Deus Ex games but I jumped into it with high hopes having really enjoyed the first Bioshock, but there seemed to be some storyline early on that paralleled the underground railroad where they were trying to rescue these slaves and I pressed the wrong button and killed some freed slaves and no one reacted, in the first Deus Ex back in 2000, yes the year 2000 not that decade, if you just randomly killed an pedestrian or something people would freak out, they might pull a gun or cower in fear, and in this game, nothing. It was as if nothing happened, the magic had died for me, I never finished it because it left such a bad taste in my mouth.
@@RobotsWithKnivesCartoons
I don't see how playing one game can make you hate another.
For example, Dark Souls and Doom 2016 are about as deep and interesting as a muddy puddle, but I still enjoyed them based on their own merits. I don't hate them because they're not as good as The Witcher III or Hedon.
Deus Ex and Infinite are very different games.
18:39 I was SO sure Bioware somehow forgot to put enemies in the Krogan catacombs. The area felt perfect for fighting off enemy ambush on Insanity (barely any cover, combat by torchlight, dead end rooms).
6:22 the thing is, I’m naturally good at filling space with stuff… cause I have adhd and notice that kinda stuff constantly…
but because it’s such a natural thing for me to do, it’s also easy for me to get TOO uniform, complacent, and efficient.
I end up deciding against making things too crowded, but then I trim the clutter too much when I step back and take another look, it just feels barren.
12:28 It happens really rarely. For example, in recent Assassin's creed games they have a HUGE map and then they split it so several teams work on their area of the map. And you can literally feel the difference between them in quality and excitement
To answer your question about poor transitions, Dark Souls 2 has a notorious example due to cut content; you climb up to the top of a windmill on a mountaintop and then at the end somehow take an elevator UP into a volcanic area, as if there was a volcano floating above the mountain. From early cg trailers it seems there was supposed to be a kinda valley you had to pass through to between both zones that didnt make it into the game
A lot of times when games are organized well, there will be a lead for design/art direction that will work with each individual team to make sure that every level has a similar narrative/environmental feel that they are going for.
I feel like I have the exact same struggle with my writing. I love character development and interaction, I can do that all day. But, if I'm not careful, I can forget to actually develop the surroundings/setting. I'm just really drawn to making people. For me, that's where all the fun is. Building characters, and seeing what happens when I throw them at each other.
4:53 I think it was "Don't tell me the moon is shining. Show me the pale light on broken glass that I can dance with the devil in".
Great video. I appreciated the tip about how you write dialogue too.
If you want more channels that focus on the narrative side of games I'd recommend "Games as Literature" and "Noah Caldwell Gervais". Though Noah's videos are massive. Basically mini-documentaries about the history, content, and story of game series. Despite their length they're well thought out and edited.
12:34. Yes, thats exactly what it means. While correlation does not mean causation - internal problems, monetary issues or poor time management can be seen in games. The most common case running low on time so the beginning of the game can be packed full of detail and character, while it starts to teter off at midgame culminating at a rushed endgame. Dark souls 1 comes to mind instantly for this.
GMTK has been one of my favourite creator for the past few years. If you are taking suggestions for more stuff from him, some of my choices would be "Morality in the Mechanics" and "The World Design of Hollow Knight"
this is the first video of yours i found, and i absolutely love your energy! subscribed :)
Please play the yakuza series!!
The characters, stories, and world building are so amazing and uniquely done. I've never seen anything like it and want more people to experience it
I feel the worldbuilding struggle! Worldbuilding is important, but man it hurts sometimes to acknowledge that my reader just won’t care most of the time. That said, it’s essential to worldbuild to keep things consistent and to give yourself a toolbox to help build the story. It goes both ways.
One of the best-written villains in any videogame is Emet Selch. He appears in an expansion of Final Fantasy 14, and they pay homage to Bioshock (the game in this video). Emet flamboyantly steals every scene he is in, his backstory is fleshed-out, he's relatable (his motivations are similar to yours), and he even wants to be your friend. Check him out if you want to see a really good villain.
16:05 - on the note of linearity in the Mass Effect franchise, the first game is very free-form and open-world. You can go anywhere and explore at your own pace. The second and third games also have this to an extent, but they're much more mission-focused in smaller semi-linear levels with a higher emphasis on engaging combat gameplay. 1 is a very different experience to subsequent games which is why there's very distinct fan crowds for 1 and 'the rest'
One thing I've learned about worldbuilding from running Dungeons & Dragons games is that it doesn't matter how much work you put into worldbuilding, your players are only going to see 5% of it, at best. So all that work you put in will go completely unseen. I imagine this holds true for any other world development, since the only thing the audience will ever see is what's in front of them. The usual advice gamemasters get is to decide the basic framework of the world based on themes, but only bothering with the details for locations that the characters are at or talking about/relevant to the story.
It's interesting how much of this stuff is really just general writing advice, and not really specific to any particular medium of storytelling. The parts that make video games and tabletop roleplaying tricky is simply that the writer doesn't have any control over the "audience" (the players).
Some of the absolute best environmental storytelling in modern gaming can be found in Ready or Not. Some absolutely brilliant work from the devs. It's a game about the work police have to do, so some scenes get pretty dark, but as the player making some of those connections absolutely shakes you to your core
12:38 To answer the question, yeah, if there's no overarching art direction and co-ordination between the level designers and overall design. That usually tells of bigger troubles within the company too though. In Bioshock style games the level designers need to work closely with art team to still have a sort of consistent feel to the environment, whereas their own input affects the feel of the section and might have some goals that need to be fulfilled on the game's higher level.
Hannah, I loved this and your monster Hunter reaction video! I would recommend you would watch the trailers for the first game and the monster ecology videos. There is also one video called “Monster Hunter: A Culture of Danger” which gives you the general story or theme that the trailers don’t tell you.
I think a lot of people underestimate what goes in to making a video game because they know nothing of the process. All games are such massive, collaborative undertakings, but unless you're actually there while something is developed, or you specifically seek out this info, you don't comprehend the massive scale of creation and thought that goes in to literally everything you see and do. Because it all has to be built from scratch, basically.
I feel that "high level" and "low level" might have been presented in a confusing way in the video. The way I was taught is to think of high and low in terms of altitude, and this informs the types of details and attention given. An eagle soaring high above a beach doesn't care about navigating individual pebbles, but an ant crawling on the crowd _must_ concern itself with the pebbles. So, counterintuitively, "high level" is usually also "foundational". A story's overall setting, such as an entire country, is a "high level" perspective, whereas the individual street or house where the protagonist grew up is a "low level" perspective. Of course, these terms are relative. For example in the TV show Bones, it is a high level perspective that FBI agents wear suits. It is a lower level perspective that the deuteragonist Booth wears colorful socks and prominent belt buckles.
As for the way that teams come together and try to not make a mismatched overall product, I think it's best to think of game production as similar to film production. In a well-organized team, there will be a director or supervisor that has the authority and responsibility to keep things consistent, and to be the unifying voice which coordinates with different departments. Put differently, because Marvel Studios has Kevin Feige, the movies more-or-less work in-concert and have brand consistency, whereas Warner Brothers did no such thing with the DCEU, so the films vary wildly in tone and quality. The same can be true of games.
Welcome back. For a positive vibe, consider that for most things electronic there is hope in making them work until the smoke escapes. A heretic tech priest once told me that electronics run on smoke. That's why they stop when it gets out. Be kind to your light and maybe it's machine spirits will want to be friends instead. :)
ii hope you'll try Journey, as he said in the video, no words are spoken in that game and yet its amazing. And can be finished in a single stream. (In including moonwalking time)
It's wonderful to see you falling down this rabbit hole of how games have become a storytelling medium. Hopefully videos like this encourage you to try playing even the notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls or Sekiro because those have a very different way of conveying the stories of their worlds compared to even other games of the same genres. And then you have the even weirder ones like NieR Automata with its strange structure, meta, 4th wall breaks, and philosophical themes. Those are the reason it's still being discussed by the vast majority of people who've played it, beyond just the appealing character designs.
Ah worldbuilding, the wonderful timesink I learned to avoid when I was running D&D. It's enjoyable to make a rich world, but your audience only cares about the parts they'll interact with or see.
As for the content that GMTK put forward, it's very good. I'll check out that channel and hopefully it also helps both my writing and game making plans.
Heya, Hannah. Love all your stuff! I just wanted to recommend a game. It has a super easy interface, so anyone can pick it up immediately. It's Telltale's The Walking Dead Games series. Literally one of the best and well written game series ever. Severely underrated. Telltale as a whole has some great games and their main purgative is creating games with well written stories. Stay awesome!
Clementine will remember this recommendation.
10:50
You, a novelist: "doesn't matter how good your world is, if your story sucks."
Me, a worldbuilder: *rolls eyes*
Sometimes, a game can feel very tonally different from level to level.
A great example from ANCIENT HISTORY is Doom 2. Some levels were great, most were fine and some were an absolute turd-salsa of utter garbage.
Even more in halo 1 combat evolved.
I mean, the first levels are very generic, kill aliens with weapons.
But as soon the swamp level starts, you inmediately feel something is off.
And the next level, about the library ( i cant go to any library, even in my own house, at night, anymore) really created micro PTSD on many halo fans.
@@sanhcman666
There's a great, atmospheric section in Star Trek: Republic Commando when you lead your squad onto the Prosecutor.
Very different from the rest of the game.
@@AndrewD8Red Star wars, you mean.
Star trek has very few games.
Still, i prefer star trek than star wars.
Its tiresome the cowboys in space against nazis, with lame samuraies
I prefer SOCIALIST ideas (i know gringos are allergic to that)
@@sanhcman666
Believe it or not, Star Trek has more video game adaptions than any other franchise, including Star Wars.
...
Now, if we're just talking about *good* video game adaptions, then yes; Star Wars is the definite winner.
@@sanhcman666
I completely agree with you about the superiority of the Space Socialism show over the Space Cowboy / Wizard-Ninja Movies, too.
...
You got me worried I'm giving off "I'm American" vibes though.
@12:26 Yes. But I suspect unfortunate outcomes like that are more common when production teams change mid project, or in a pinching combination of scope creep and time constraints.
11:29 * minor spoilers for Deus Ex* In the first game people were getting augs to improve themselves/adapt to their jobs/fix injuries etc. The Illuminati wanted to control them, and secretly updated their software to control them, but one of the Illuminati wanted to stop them and stop augmentation, so he made the augs to crazy instead. Millions died in the "aug incident" leading to their oppression in the 2nd game.
Sending good vibes to your lights!
Bioshock 1 is still my favourite game, after 15 years. It also has a novel written about the backstory if you're interested, it's called "BioShock: Rapture", but either way it's a great game with an interesting story full of twists and turns.
12:27
I would argue Dark Souls 2 is an example of this. The conection between levels makes absolutely no sense. Like how you climb up a windmill in a valley of poison, and at the top there is...an Iron castle surrounded by lava?
12:26 If you're really interested (and have the time for it) I highly recommend SovietWomble's video essay on The Forest. It illustrates quite well how a lack of overhead planning when writing a game's story (and failing to take other aspects of the game into account) could lead to a terribly disjointed narrative. It's something like three hours long, so be warned, but I think you'd find it fascinating.
Come to think of it, you could even stream watching it sometime.
**Sends positive vibes like there is no tomorrow**
I think yes to world-building, but do not go overboard and let it hamper you from actually writing a good story. A good story is the main focus, and the world-building is there to make sure it doesn't fall apart when scrutinized. The best games I have played have made me want to write. Thief, Dishonored, etc. Not only because their worlds were so fascinating, but because they seemed true and was backed up by the graphics (now...graphics differ from back in the day to now, but still).
The Last Guardian on Playstation is a masterclass in minimalist storytelling imo. Pathologic and Pathalogic 2 by Ice-Pick Lodge are fascinating from a story telling point of view, absolutely worth a closer look. And in the new Hitman Agent 47 doesn't have a barcode on the back of his neck, he has a QR code.
There is so much good stuff here.
I like you looking at the video essay stuff on games. It can go deep
12:27 Yes, games can be awkwardly built and structured, just like books can. There definitely are games with major tonal and thematic issues.
I totally recommend you to play Journey! And Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. All games where amazing storytelling is in focus, without the challenge of difficult gameplay in the way (especially Edith Finch uses gameplay to tell the story in a great way).
23:35
You almost seem sad, like "I want a warning too!" 😂😂
It does happen yes. For the most part though games have an overall game designer and qa playtesters that make sure all the levels are good. Kind of like how lead animators make sure all the other animators are keeping characters on model.
Using said in writing:
It's fine for exposition, or if you don't expect to be doing an audiobook version. When reading, you tend to almost jump over the word and move on to the next bit, but when listening to an audiobook, it becomes really obvious when you overuse the word said. The narrator says it every time, and repeated use of the same phrase is very noticeable.
It's not as bad when you do it like, "he said while doing something relevant to the scene." That being said, you can add so much more emotional context by using more descriptive tags like, "he stated calmly," or "he barked angrily."
The best way to think of it is the more important the scene, the less you use "said." You want the reader to get a clearer picture of what's going on, without slowing the pace. Descriptive or action tags fill in detail without needing an extra paragraph to fill the reader in on what the characters are doing in between exchanges.
12:25 *eyeing Silent Cartographer vs The library from halo 1*
12:26 Yes, it happens, I believe it is what happened to Prince of Persia 2008.
The Intensity Scale... P.G. Wodehouse plotted his stories like a wavelength graph that oscillated between Serious and Silly. If a scene ever went too far in either direction, he'd rewrite it to maintain the consistent tone.
Fallout 3 , New Vegas, and 4 are really good examples of how items , skelatons and bodys tell a story, allo stesso every location has items and skelatons specificarlo placed so that it kinda shows what was going on the moment the bombs fell or sometimes what happened recently, like in fallout 3 there is a wall outside a bunker with a Mans shadow burned into the wall next to the bunker door, later if you go to underworld a ghoul there tells you how her father was caught in the blast when hè was checking if the coast was clear. Then theres the plunger room also which shows the most confusing thing where apparently a man tried to use plungers to reach the cealing so the walls are covered in plungers with a skeleton and blood in the centre of the room, thus you know what happened to him
Regarding your question regarding shifts between levels, yes and no. And that’s not necessarily limited to just bad or poorly made games. It’s rarer in good games and usually has a distinct reason for the disconnect. For example, Halo has a lot of disconnected environments, but there’s a reason for that. Different parts of the story happen in vastly different areas. And then all kinds chaos and shifts happen when the Flood get unleashed. Not only do different Halo levels happen in vastly different areas with a Halo, some games don’t even have the majority of the plot on a single Halo. Halo 2 has stuff in a space station, stuff on Earth, stuff on both on and in a Halo installation, Covenant ship, Orbital installation around a gas giant, etc. And you see the story of the main campaign spin out from the perspective of Master Chief and The Arbiter (a disgraced Covenant Elite with a different play style from Master Chief). Or the Mass Effect series. Different planets and locations set up different types of missions, different landscapes, sights, types of settlements, problems, etc. They all feel different and distinct. But even if some planets and conflicts don’t need to be resolved and are disconnected from the main plot, they still offer experiences, some of which may affect public perception of your Shepard through the original trilogy (though it won’t affect things for Mass Effect Andromeda, since you’re not Shepard in that one). A really good game with disconnected level design usually treats the disconnect as a bit of a puzzle until you either see what is going on or the design conceit or plot twist is revealed.
Great video, I think Valve is the king at environmental storytelling I suggest u a video from GMTK called "Valve's secret weapon" where he talks more in depth about how Valve makes its games
"Why do people get augmented?"
In the last game, Human Revolution it was pretty normal, your own character gets hurt really badly and only being heavily augmented saved his life. other people just got fancy prosthetics that they needed or perhaps get augmented to do better at what they want to do or perhaps just because. An event I don't wish to spoil for you, happens at the end of that game that's out of the augmented people's control but made everyone else in the world basically afraid it might happen again someday. Therefore Mankind Divided starts out with mankind divided in that sense ;3
The question that you asked is even deeper that your initial formuation: Yes there is dissoance between levels that are developed by different people, especially if the game was rushed. Sometimes to a level that it forces to play counterintuitive to a story beat. The other part of this is that the gameplay interacts with that system too. Sometimes the level design wants to suggest a functioning society but stealing things has no consequence/or low consequence so the entire place feels lawless, especially if stealing stuff makes you strong. Sometimes you are supposed to be a stealth character but your costume sticks out like a sore thumb (Assassins creed). This all can snowball really fast into either direction, where in one hub of the world everything works together quite nicely and in another everything feels meaningless (Bioshock Infinites mid game point in the prison is a great example of this).
Edit: also recommendations for environmental story telling: Journey, Limbo and Playdead's Inside
You should definitely play Journey. It's BEAUTIFUL, and such a cool story, told as they said without a single word. The most you get are pictograms on walls that you have to interpret on your own. There's no dialogue, no text, nothing. Just the occasional mural on a wall.
There's also Sky: Children of Light, which is a free to play online game that's very similar in style to Journey. It's very cute and has a super fun environment with all kinds of things to read into and try and understand. There are spirit stones you activate and have to follow the echo of a spirit through a small journey of some kind.
Some are beautiful, some are sad, it's all really cool!
If you've never played Journey, as a story teller that's definitely a game you need to try.
I am surprised the video didn't mention Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian, Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Those are big in using the environment and other indirect means to tell a story.
25:25 "how can I now implement environmental aspects into descriptions in a way that the reader won't notice" Sunless Sea does this best. It does "show, don't tell" like no other game (or "tell, don't show", since games show while Sunless Sea tells). Other games may have a better story or storytelling, but Sunless Sea has the best literary writing.
Will we see the next book from Hannah adapted into the video game space as a new IP?!?! Love this journey for you!
If you are interested in seeing a masterclass of environmental storytelling, you should check out Outer Wilds (not to be confused with the Bethesda rpg Outer Worlds). If you do them make sure you play through the base game before interacting with the game's excellent DLC.
Can’t wait to see your talk at GDC (Game Developers Conference) How Gaming Made Me A Better Writer!
Nathan phillion did actually Star in a fan made uncharted short film
I think for enviromental storytelling and storytelling over all, Outer Wilds is up there.
12:40 water levels. Just, water levels. You will see no greater shift, no larger rift in experience, than when you are forced by the game to plunge into a water level. But usually doesnt happen, since games are LOOOOONG proyects, planning is usually the first thing that happens
From watching Hannah to watching more Hannah!
I'm also a writer, but more of a journalist and travel writer. One of my big breakthroughs was learning how to use literary devices only in ways that are necessary. I think a big problem in modern writing is that people will overuse metaphors where they're not needed or use too-vague language to sound poetic. I think writing should be precise and that literary devices should aid that precision instead of making it more vague. I know this doesn't pertain to video games, but I'm curious whether or not you agree. I never took any classes so I've been figuring this process out myself over the years. It always helps to bounce things off of other writers.
12:36 That is a problem in many games! Writing is historically undervalued in games, because it requires very little technical expertise compared to the rest of the game-making process, and if things are disjointed enough, some games begin to tear apart at the seems.
Mass Effect 3 has a lot wrong with it, but one of the issues is that each chapter of the game is focused on a single planet's fate in a galaxy-wide war, with the larger war hanging in the background and serving as the main story between planets. Each planet had its own writer who was responsible for its storyline.
The problem is that no single writer knew how the main story would end, because it was re-written several times. This becomes obvious near the end when the game starts to re-tread themes it already explored and closed the book on and starts to backtrack and contradict earlier thematic points.
Mass Effect is a lovely series, but they got messier and messier as they went on, and you could see a series built on strong writing start to not value its writers.
Some world builders do just write world building for fun, the might what to write a story in their world after some time but it can be either way around.
10:18 NO, it is the best part.
I'm a bit late to the party, but I need to throw in a request for ye ol' hyperfixation
Frostpunk. I don't wanna spoil too much about it, but it's an amazing game with amazing trailers and a sequel on the way, plus, Bricky made a video covering it.
Telling the mood through the setting in books:
I like to do as many things as possible with as little as possible. Readers do like to have a clear picture of the setting to avoid the white room, but I read Tolkien, and he gives huge, page long descriptions of setting, and it's just too much. I found the best way to do it is to give a fairly short and basic description of the setting, then add more as the characters involved interact in the setting. Meeting in a cheap motel, then having the characters try to find somewhere to sit down that doesn't have a stain, or even ignore the stains and sit anyway and you can use the setting to show what kind of characters they are. The germophobe would refuse to sit and carefully not touch anything. The exhausted character wouldn't care and just sit wherever.
Just thought of this wording - the setting is another character in the scene. Characters in the same scene interact and affect each other.
LOL @ The skeleton with his gentlemans sausage caught in a fan.
Bloodborne is an excellent example of story telling using the environment
Hello from Ottawa!
What makes video game writing so special and so difficult to master is that the writer isn't in control of how the story is told. It's entirely possible that the player will turn around, look at a wall for a while, then put the controller down and never return. The writing must be engaging enough to convince the player to follow along while also giving some breathing room for impromptu audience input.
I find it funny how you home in on the agent's barcode. I wonder if the dev had a conversation about how that barcode would show up on someone who wasn't pale white.
Really interesting video!
🙏🏼 thanks for watching
Video Games, making life better for everyone.
The triumphant return of the Buffy omnibuses, you love to see it!
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Regarding world building:
There are creators that build cathedrals, and creators that build scaffolds.
The former derive joy from making intricate, beautiful, expansive, complete places for their minds to inhabit.
I'm a scaffolder. I'm painting a beautiful picture (the story and it's characters) and I need a place sturdy enough to hang it so that it looks plausible and believable. I build my worlds just enough to hang the story on so it makes sense and the place looks real. Too much more feels wasteful and loses my interest rapidly
I stumbled upon one old game trailer and realized that you need more of the good old Warhammer, like from the 2000s
youtube video name
Warhammer - Mark Of Chaos - Trailer [HD] - BGMA
Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer
Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer 2
Interesting that he didn't use any of the Soulsbourne games, as they are very heavily focused on environmental story telling.