Often misunderstood, often bad, and once in a while without equal: writing in video games is one of the mediums more elusive elements. It’s the element that sets the greatest games apart – but not on its own. Good writing in video games is as important as it is rare, but what is far more vital is the communication between the writers and the developers.
Often when we talk about good writing, we think of the banter between Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan, or we will think about the intricacies of the plot of something like Bioshock and its rich world of characters and their histories that we play voyeur to. And these are examples of how good writing can elevate a game above its peers. However, more than existing within in its own space, writing in video games needs to be far more collaborative than it is in say, the film industry, literature, or even music. This is simply down to the difference between a story told and a story played. Rather than following a story from point A to B, the idea of having agency within the environment of the narrative means that in video games – perhaps more so than in films – stories need to be told in other ways. In film stories can be told visually rather than leaning on exposition, the opening shot of Star Wars IV: A New Hope told you everything you needed to know about the set up of the film; it saved time, but it also layered on involvement and excitement, because the actions needs to be followed.
In video games the story is often told through breaks in the game: cut scenes; however, there are games that do not break, that actually fuse the narrative to the gameplay – games like Half-Life and Bioshock. The latter allowed you to listen to audio logs as you crept through corridors, allowing exposition and detail to be filled in whilst performing actions that do not correlate to them. Half-Life in particular was unique in that it had no breaks from gameplay, allowing you to stand and listen to characters as they spoke and as the action occurred, but also to roam freely if desired (and in my case mess around with gravity gun). What this gave over to the player, other than simple freedom, was the choice to become part of the story. Often it was that I wanted to stand and look at characters looking back at me and feel a part of the world. This is great storytelling; this is what the medium can do that no other medium can: the feeling of true participation.
The only trouble was that Half-Life would have been, if it were a film, a by the numbers sci-fi action flick with a forgettable plot (that would probably have Hayden Christensen in it, or Kate Beckinsale, or both). We often gauge the writing in games by stacking them up against what’s on film. But as a game it was great, it was bolstered by having agency in that world, our expectations are different with games. There was more to the writing in Half-Life that made it work in an interactive sense; if it was viewed passively then it wouldn’t have the same impact. The impact that games have is designed to work not despite our involvement but – when it is done well – because of our involvement.
This is also why a lot of the time there are games released that will be praised for their writing, and this praise can be very misleading. I had a moment recently when playing Life is Strange when I thought to myself, this writing isn’t just clichéd: it’s flat out bad. But what I was doing there was focusing on the writing in front of me in filmic terms. I wasn’t focusing on the writing in gaming terms. Good game writing can be something as simple as structuring the story in a way that allows for the gameplay to advance the action and storytelling through participation. In a sense: knowing where to step back and where to dive in. Often when we talk about good writing, we are actually talking about good collaboration. Braid is a rare, unique thing in video games. It manages to tell the story with its gameplay, along with multiple other methods. Piecing together a puzzle is an element of gameplay, and the resulting picture is an element of narrative, and so a fusion is achieved. One of the best moments in the game is toward the end, where the final sequence is played out in reverse, through the time rewind mechanic, and this reveals an entire element of the plot previously unconsidered, and tells an entirely new story. This is pure collaboration between the designer and…well actually it is benefited by having just one creative at the helm: Jonathan Blow, and one artist David Hellman. And so the game didn’t need much collaboration.
What happened when I looked at Life is Strange last week was that I had put my controller down and I was watching some action unfold. That action wasn’t written very well, the dialogue was a little clunky, a lot clichéd, and the plot up to that point had been done before and better elsewhere. Which isn’t to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy watching it, but what I had missed was the game writing up to that point, the layering of writing on exploration that I had played through up to that point. The way that Max’s thoughts were sounded out as I roamed the halls was good writing, the way that plot was structured to unfold at the speed at which it did and in the way in which it did was good exectution.
This holds true of a game like Uncharted as well because although the banter is amusing, it is the way that the characters are written and the situations they are put in which allow their expression and relation to one another that excels. They not only pop out as familiar and warm in the way that they speak and act, but the writers were in full communication with level designers to facilitate sections of great storytelling. One need look no further than the Jeep section in Drake’s Fortune; scripted well, perfectly placed within the structure of the narrative and very much needed in gameplay terms to break up the formula as it had been up to that point. Couple this with some genuinely amusing conversation and you have layered writing in perfect harmony with level design.
Writing has to be more collaborative in this medium than it is any other; often this is why games like Gears of War and Killzone can be so bland and uncompelling with their stories and characters. They were built for the shooting from the ground up while the writing was an afterthought. They wanted certain sections of gameplay to be there and so they were there, with very little or paper-thin justification, and this too is fair enough – games should be allowed to just be games. Building on gameplay is where it has to start, but there are very few games that will only have gameplay. Even in a marketplace populated with indie games and old-school minimalist games, rarely do we have a game that doesn’t attempt a narrative at all. Even something as stark and sparse as Hotline Miami makes fun of itself with the notion that it should try and justify the blood-gorged rampage you had happily embarked on, but it did so in an interesting, surreal and well-written way. It ran its gameplay in contradiction to where its story was going, making conflict within the player as your violence became less and less real, justified, and involving.
It is only the way that we evaluate and critique writing in games that has to be altered. In a medium that allows interactivity, the goal posts have to shift. This is why games like Beyond: Two Souls and Life is Strange can get away with being – in parts – very poorly written, because in other parts they are written very well; it is those parts that we have to focus on going forward. One of the best examples of good writing I have seen is in one of the earlier missions in Call of Duty 4. A nuke is set off, and I remember the feeling of walking my character out into oblivion being one of the most emotive and devastating I’ve had in gaming. This was offset by the lack in quality of the filmic writing that surrounded the event. I remember thinking how much more potent that would be if it were surrounded by better writing. That scene would have been all the more powerful if I had cared about the characters and felt I had any real connection with them.
So there we have it: two forms of writing that come together to form the make-up of the games that we love. The most important is the game-writing done in collaboration with level-designers, artists, and creative developers. This involves us the players, and creates the more powerful ways that our stories are told to us. The other form is the more traditional writing, the dialogue, the plots themselves, the construction of the characters. Far from just ornament, the latter form of the writing is vital to layer on believability, humour, humanity, and excitement into our games.
