We had a rather protracted debate about whether you could do a proper tragedy in game stories - i.e. Romeo and Juliet.
My opinion is that you can do elements of tragedy, perhaps a bittersweet ending or tragedy that affects NPCs, but you just cannot do a tragic story for the main character successfully. Why?
It is my firm belief that you will set the player up for failure if you do this. They "win" the game, but the outcome is a negative one - effectively they lose. I've seen this in a couple of games - situations where you lose no matter what you do - the result is usually extreme player frustration and an overwhelming sense of having no real impact in the game world (and in turn pulling you out of any sense if immersion).
The response from nearly everyone I spoke to is that games have to overcome the childish notion of winning if narrative is to progress. I don't see any real logic in this. Tragedy does not instantly make narrative better than a story with a positive outcome. You can also still deal with tragic elements, loss of a loved one, pain & suffering, etc - just make sure that the player still feels like they have had an impact on the world and that it hasn't all been for nothing.
I think there is still plenty of scope for game narrative to satisfy more highbrow tastes, but we have to still serve the parts of a game that make it a game - the element of the player character making a difference is key to that.
1 comment:
I agree with your main point,at the end of the main gamne narrative the player must feel they have made a difference, so even if there are elements of tragedy in a game story, even if the protagonist dies or fails at the task the character has set for himself the sum of the game must have some impact on the game world, even if it is in ways that the player (and the avatar character) doesn't neccesarily know or expect initially.
However game characters are often tragic characters, that are doomed in some way and I don't see any harm in playing out that doom. e.g. in red dead redemptiuon I thought the way they handled the end of the story was very nice.
The main game narrative ends with you confronting the 'bad guy' that you have been chasing all game.
What makes it interesting is what happens next - I see the next section as the narrative REWARD - the happy ending you've been working towards.
Having played through your utopia it allows the story of the main protagonists life to end, in the way it more or less has to (given that one of the recurring themes of the game is that you can't run away frokm your past). It is essentially tragic, but by that point you've had your reward, and the last section feels more like an epilogue.
Of course the ending for red dead has caused some debate, and plenty of people hate it. So I suppose my question is, would those players have been more satisfied if the game had ended after the fight with dutch? Maybe.
JRPGs especially love their tragic characters, and tragic stories. Sadly I find their adolescent angst so overwhelmingly cloying that by the time the excessively foreshadowed tragedy happens I'm more likely to to say 'go-on die already'. Which means the emotional impact is lessened, for better or worse.
A related point is that if a game has a single protagonist, then a tragic ending can seem an empty way to end a game. In games with more ensemble casts of player controlled chartacters you can have a tragic ending to a personal story, but soften that with more positive ends to other ones.
Heavy Rain is a good example of that. Now I loved Heavy Rain, and I even loved it when I finished with the second most depressing ending the game had to offer. I have to admit though I can imagine many players finding the ending I had as a bit of a downer.
Can a game end with a se7en like ending, and still be 'fun'?
Ultimately, it is a tricky issue. Games provide satisfaction in ways movies don't. You have mot only an emotional investment in the protagonists, but a sense of agency. You can't help feeling you the player made the choices that led you to thsi place (even if that is an illusion) and that a bad ending is your fault for being 'bad at the game'. That is a feeling to avoid I suspect.
What a ramble I've made here ....
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