It isn’t common lately that I am “pushed” to write. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but I am often quite content just sitting around and wasting my time. Lately, however, the issue of story in games has been knocking at my door. So why don’t I go ahead and jump on in?

I finished Mass Effect a while back. I most definitely enjoyed the game. I was a fan of the story and the methods in which it was told. It was because I enjoyed the storytelling that one specific example of “bleugh” jumped out at me.

I landed on some planet somewhere (like you do) and began driving around, firing my guns to pass the time, and hoping to stumble upon some points of interest. I found a structure that, when approached, turned out to be the ruin of an ancient race. I interacted with it and was treated to a few pages of text explaining that this device had “shared” a memory with me: a prehistoric earthling coming into contact with the ancient race responsible for building this ruin.

This was all spelled out to me in text. It was kind of shocking given the amount of cut scenes I’d already seen in this game. It wasn’t poorly written or anything, it just didn’t “fit.” Because it’s what I do, I imagined the circumstances that led to the inclusion of this content: random designer is tasked with putting in some lore for this ancient race. This designer checks the source for lore, notes that they visited earth long ago, and decides they’ll combine that with the “transference of memories” technology that they’re famous for and make a ruin where you receive this memory. Designer, not wanting to “bother” anyone (like a few artists to make a caveman, and a member of this ancient race, and a prehistoric earth, and a sound person to make the sounds for this planet, and another designer to “set the scene,” etc.) decides that instead of making a cut scene, they will convey their idea in text. Simple, right? Sure, but weird.

It felt like it had been crammed in at the last minute, like they had run out of time to do another cut scene and just wrote this in instead. Had this been a codex entry (an in game repository for wodges of text) it would’ve felt much more at home, but, the codex isn’t the place where your player writes down tales about what memories he or she was given while out in the world.

None of the above is meant to suggest that cut scenes are the way to tell a story in a game. While I haven’t played it, one of the most mentioned items in any Metal Gear Solid 4 review is the length of the cut scenes. People suggest they spend more time watching them than playing the actual game. While working at SOE, one thing a lot of designers (myself included) were psyched about was getting tools implemented to make the creation of cut scenes something that could easily be done (we could hack it in by using a non-cancellable bind-sight spell, but it wouldn’t really be polished). However, if we had put cut scenes in, a lot of designers would have put on their director hats and started making uselessly long cut scenes for anything they thought important. Cut scenes are great, but I don’t think they’re the “correct” answer to “telling story in a game” any more than pages of text are.

Games are an interactive medium, so the real way, we (game designers) believe, to convey story, is to get the player to do something. Have the player kill off a bunch of invaders, tend to wounded, rescue stolen supplies, and repair the battlements, and they’re definitely going to get a sense of the setting.
I created numerous newbie experiences for EverQuest II and I don’t think I ever got story right. Why? I was always very focused on progression, and stuff like “story” ended up being “written in” to “fit.” Nothing had been planned from the beginning, so I kind of hashed it together (sometimes I did good, sometimes I did bad). Given that I’ve done it wrong myself, I don’t feel bad saying I’ve also seen others do it wrong.

Recently I took my low level alliance shaman in World of Warcraft to Dustwallow Marsh. When I landed in Theramore, the first quest I got (and, thus, the first quest I did) involved a gnome trying to re-light a lighthouse. The story of this quest line went as such:

Initial Quest Exclamation Point: A gnome wants to re-light the lighthouse, go help her!
Me: Ok!
Gnome: It’s old, but it will work if we get it oil!
Me: Ok!
Gnome: Great! You got the oil. While I was digging around in the lighthouse, I found this highly laughable book about sea monsters! How silly is that? Here, you have it. I’m going to get to work on finishing the repairs.
Me: Ok! (Thinking: Sea monsters are laughable? We have dragons… mages… a portal into a world of islands floating in space… but sea monsters are laughable?)
Sailor: Those tales are totally true! One sea monster even lives here in Dustwallow Marsh! If you want confirmation, go talk to Fisherman!
Me: Ok!
Fisherman: Ok, I’ll tell you about the one who lives here but only if you go get attacked by a mob because I have a thinly veiled reason for you to do so.
Me: Ok!
Fisherman: Great job doing that thing I told you to do. Now, about this sea monster. He is attracted to bright lights, that’s why they turned off the light house.
Me: Ok, I will go warn them! (Thinking: Ah, so whether or not I actually came out here and did your pointless task, if all were right in the world the monster would’ve spawned anyway, right?)
Sailor: Really?! We turned off the lighthouse and forgot why?! Omgz! PREPARE FOR BATTLE!
Me: Ok!

What I imagine was meant to be an epic tale about a sea monster came off as quite less than epic. I did all of these quests one right after another, and the whole thing, if you discount travel time, took about 15 minutes. Any sense of awe for this ancient monster that some claimed didn’t exist was a bit ruined because of how quickly I could progress from start to finish of the quest line. These were the first things I did in this zone, so AFTER coming into the zone and helping take down an ancient sea monster, I went on to less exciting tasks, like handing out pamphlets to guards.

Armchair design? Yes, let’s!

How about you still turn on the lighthouse as your first quest in the zone. And after that, you don’t get a follow up about sea monsters that are apparently “laughable.” Instead, you start doing your quests as normal. Occasionally, though, you receive quests to investigate missing patrols, late ships, and other mishaps that involve the docks in one way or another. Your investigations turn up “little,” other than pieces of wood from ships that has been clawed to shreds, and no survivors. Eventually you find one dying survivor and he mentions the name Tethyr. From there you start to learn about the lore. And then, instead of doing a completely pointless task for someone, you go on a quest to talk to the one sailor who claimed to have survived an attack by Tethyr years ago. From him you learn Tethyr’s weakness, and also how to lure him (crank the lighthouse up to 11). THEN you summon and kill Tethyr, but not before he does something amazingly destructive to showcase his power, like destroy a ship in front of you while the quest NPC yells at his archers to stand their ground, instead of rushing out to attempt to save a ship that’s obviously lost anyway. Maybe one archer knows his wife is on that ship and runs ahead anyway, only to get devoured by Tethyr. It takes more work (and definitely more than just designer work), but even if you left out some of the stuff at the end I think it could’ve been presented better.

This was the same shaman who ran through the Draenei newbie experience and enjoyed it immensely. That newbie experience definitely built up to something that was then completed BY you, the player. The only “downside” that I recall from that one was that the final “build up,” (meaning: “oh no, we have to act now or else…!”) came on rather suddenly, and in the middle of me doing a bunch of other completely pointless (in comparison) quests. I’ll spare you any armchair designing for that quest line, however.

“Injecting” a story into a world has so many potential pitfalls. I just spoke of “pointless” quests, however, I’m probably one of the biggest fans of pointless quests. One thing that has often been stressed among my peers is the need for presenting players on a “Hero’s Journey.” Everyone seems to believe that if the player isn’t doing heroic deeds and changing the world (which they never do anyway), then they will become disinterested and feel bored. While I definitely agree that heroics are great and should be employed, I’ve seen this “Hero’s Journey” claim used to incorrectly—in my opinion—deride simple quests, such as, “go harvest some corn for me.”

“I entered this new zone and I’m harvesting corn, this doesn’t feel very heroic.” The need for heroics is quite definitely real, in my opinion, but I also believe there is a need for exactly the opposite (provided it’s logical). If the world is constantly beset by enemies with whom you must repeat the same cycle—kill their agents, destroy their war machines, infiltrate their base and steal their plans, kill their spies, then finally kill the boss—then the world is going to get stale VERY quickly. Things, I guess, get un-fun when someone is looking for a specific kind of content and can not find it: “I’d like to be carving my sword through hordes of enemies, but all I can find are harvest quests,” or, “I’d like to be helping these farmers, because I find harvesting more fun after work than killing, but I only have quests to kill bandits,” or “I’d like to go searching for the rare fish this guy is talking about, but apparently he won’t spawn unless I’ve completed all this guy’s OTHER quests… ugh.”

In my opinion, quests have become a crutch when it comes to story telling. They provide an easy way to “force” story onto players, and they distract from the “grind,” but they carry with them gobs of baggage.

• What happens when a quest is something your character wouldn’t do, but there is no alternative?
• What happens when the dialog your character is speaking is not something your character would say?
• What happens when quests, which are meant to “offset” the grind, become the new grind, as you go through them with your 2nd or 3rd character? Grinding isn’t necessarily preferable over quests, but it lends itself to “passive play” much better than questing does. “I just want to sit and grind while watching TV, I don’t feel like running back and forth. Besides, I’ve done the quests in this zone with 4 alts already.”
• What happens when quests are crammed in because there are supposed to be enough quests to get someone from level X to Y and they become obviously illogical or stupid? “Bring me 10 bear ears, BUT ONLY PRISTINE BEAR EARS? REGULAR ONES WON’T DO!” What happens when it’s obvious the quest designer is making fun of themselves?
• How do you convey an “epic” feel to a quest line that is completed in one night by most, and one hour by those who are powering through it?
• What happens when your players just want to group with their friends, but can’t do it “efficiently” because their friends are “behind them” in quest progression?

If you get a chance, I highly recommend running through the Death Knight “newbie” experience in WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion. It’s quite a step forward in “storytelling” as far as MMOs are concerned, but it “cheats.” You watch the world around you change based on your actions and you definitely get the same sense of progression that you would get in a single player game. All the instancing make the world feel real, and then… you’re kicked out into the regular world to deal with all the crappy “vanilla” quests :P

Is it a great, great experience? Yes!

Will it dull with time if you do it more than once? Yes.

Does it “fix” storytelling in MMOs? No, it just happens to do a really good job at sidestepping some of the more common problems.

Quests are a crutch for both storytelling and content, but right now they’re the best we’ve got. Who wants to make them better?

Tags: mass effect, quests, story

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Gaming, MMO, WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.