April 18, 2008 at 9:40 am
Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.
John Carmack
What do Doom 3, BioShock, and Lost Odyssey have in common? Aside from being powered by major FPS engines, it's that they all have a two-tier storytelling system. All three of the games have a story that the player is forced to view during the course of the game, and all three allow the player to optionally see much more of the story through written text or spoken word. Doom 3 accomplishes this through PDAs, BioShock through audio diaries, and Lost Odyssey through dream sequences.
This is an interesting setup in that it allows people who simply want to shoot things or grind levels to do so without terribly long interruptions to the action, while individuals who enjoy a deep and nuanced story still has it available to them.
While this is a good thing, there's one aspect of it that I don't particularly like: the additional storytelling segments are a modal thing separate from the game itself. While the sequences may be quite well written (Lost Odyssey, in particular, has some very strong writing), the transition to and from can be somewhat jarring. You transition from active participant to passive listener/reader, and then go back to active participant again. This makes the first few seconds after each transition kind of weird.
So, I don't think that these modal sequences are a silver bullet. It accomplishes the goal of allowing people who want extra story to get it, but I feel that it is probably a suboptimal way of achieving that goal.
Anyway, just wanted to toss this out there.