storytelling
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Hitman: Absolution trailer focuses on story, actors in goofy mo-cap getups
The Hitman series is known for allowing players to create their own narratives within the sandbox levels, but with Hitman: Absolution, developer IO Interactive has enlisted Hollywood talent like Vivica Fox, Powers Boothe and Shannyn Sossamon to help tell Agent 47's latest story.
People live in Pandaria; or, our house in the middle of the sea
"And that night, her mom said that the two of them and the now-dead guy were the only 3 people who ever lived in Las Vegas. Everybody else just arrived, ate their complimentary shrimp cocktails, and left." Blizzard's focus is, as they've repeatedly professed, "to create the most epic gaming experiences ever." But for all the world-ending threats we've encountered in the last few WoW expansions, Azeroth just isn't that big. The entire Eastern Kingdoms are about the size of the island of Manhattan. We're made to believe that hundreds of thousands to millions of people of various races inhabit the planet, but examining the amount of residential space in each zone shows us room for far, far fewer. Now, yes, the Azeroth we see could simply be an abstraction of some other, larger, "real" Azeroth that doesn't tangibly exist. But this one is the one we get, and it seems sillier and sillier each time when you ponder things like where exactly King Wrynn managed to find a hundred thousand troops to send to Northrend, or where night elves have lived for the past ten thousand years. The same goes for Azeroth's endless supply of doomsday villains and the cultists they inevitably find to do their bidding. They had to come from somewhere. And they definitely don't live in Stormwind. But the problem isn't even really where they live. It's how they live. It's where they come from. Outland presented a unique opportunity to show us the how and why of the many strange alien races on an entirely new planet, but we learned more about how they died than how they lived -- the fate of most non-player races in World of Warcraft. Their homelands were a theme park, a casino, and we run through pulling levers, grabbing drinks, buying t-shirts. Nobody lived there. Pandaria, though? People live there. The continent feels more like a brand new planet than even Outland ever did.
The Daily Grind: What's the best way to deliver MMO lore?
The MMO genre is increasingly dominated by AAA titles like The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of which tuck story and lore into special cutscenes bookending regular combat, but that's not the only way to drop backstory into a game. In fact, Diablo III's lore-delivery system might just top them all. Did I just use Diablo III and lore in the same sentence? I did! Diablo III reveals its backstory to the player through a series of voiceovers that play as you play rather than take you out of the fight. Little audio pop-ups narrate the significance of characters and places so you understand what's going on. It's not that the game never employs cutscenes; it just restricts cutscenes to Very Important Events. Granted, this type of system might not work so well in a full-fledged massively multiplayer game, so today we're asking what you think: How do you want lore delivered in your MMOs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
EVE Evolved: Sandboxes make the best stories
Every MMO has stories to tell, some written by developers and told through quest content and others created by players through everyday gameplay. Themepark MMOs lead every player through the same fictional story and give no real control over the outcome, but I have to wonder whether the effort invested in that story is even worth it. MMOs are meant to have long-term replayability, and a linear story is new only the first time you play through it. After a while, players find themselves skipping dialogue, ignoring quest text, and grinding yet another character to the endgame. In contrast, sandbox MMOs tend to eschew their own storylines in favour of letting players make it up as they go along. Sandbox MMO EVE Online has spawned some incredible tales and videos over its lifetime, with stories of political goings-on, wars, and record heists hitting the news every year without fail. EVE stories usually also appeal to many people who don't even play the game, an effect uncommon in other MMOs. It's not often that the in-game exploits of a themepark MMO guild will reach the media or generate the same level of interest as a big EVE story, so what is the magic sauce that makes stories from EVE so appealing? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the best stories and videos from EVE Online and ask why EVE continues to grip us with its stories and themepark MMOs don't.
Guild Wars 2 weaves together three story types
ArenaNet Continuity and Lore Designer Jeff Grubb claims that there are three types of stories that players will encounter in Guild Wars 2, and he's written up an informative post explaining how the team has woven these tales into the game. "This is an underlying theme of the game -- people coming together and cooperating to fight a greater foe," Grubb explains. The first type is what he calls Story of the World. This is the over-arching narrative that deals with the biggest threat to the world (the Elder Dragons) and how it is to be countered. ArenaNet chose to use dynamic events to tell these stories so that players are gradually made aware of the threat. The second story type is your personal one, which tells of your own rise to power, fame, and glory in a variety of ways. Finally, there's the story of the five central iconic characters in the game (Destiny's Edge) and how they relate to you and each other.
Why I Play: The Secret World
I can't stop! No, seriously -- I had delusions of sneaking this article out a week earlier than scheduled, but that involved actually tearing myself away from Kingsmouth long enough to log out and write. And you can see how well that turned out! It's hard enough trying to do so now; every time I think about The Secret World, I want to jump right back in and... um, excuse me a moment, I'll be right back... Hey, I just needed to test something in-game for this article, honest! Though if the test was to be able to log in and right back out of TSW, I failed. I checked what I needed to and thought to myself, "Just five more minutes." Before I knew it, too many hours flew by. And this was not an isolated incident, either. As much as I enjoy playing MMORPGs (anyone who has heard me in a game can attest to that!), it has been quite a while since I truly reveled in my time in game and champed at the bit to get back in when I had to leave. It's no secret that I have been waiting for this game for years now, and I have to say I am not disappointed. Funcom's newest release has truly ensnared me. So what is so compelling about The Secret World? Do you have a minute or five?
What WoW's story could learn from Diablo III (and vice versa)
I like the Diablo storyline. It's complex without being incomprehensible, and unlike WoW, it doesn't have a gigantic and sometimes daunting pile of backstory to wade through. You can pretty much jump into Diablo III without having played any of the prior games and still have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The world, Sanctuary, has a fairly simple premise, but the repercussions of its creation have far-reaching effects that are more often than not a gigantic pain in the butt for those living on Sanctuary. I liked Diablo III. I liked the gameplay -- who doesn't like carving their way through hordes of demon corpses? I liked the controls, which were relatively simplistic, and I liked the talent trees, which were fun without being confusing. It's hard to compare WoW and Diablo, because the two games are so very different in concept. One's an MMO, the other is a click-fest of looting and gore. But they both have one thing in common: story. And oddly enough, it seems as though there are a few things these two games could learn from each other on that front. Please note: There are spoilers for Diablo III in this post. If you haven't finished playing through to the end and you wish to avoid spoilers, turn away!
Meet Heckerty, well-known British children's story, makes its way to the iPad
Meet Heckerty is a delightful British children's story starring Heckerty, a "zany, 409-year-old, upside-down-on-her-broomstick, green-faced witch," and her sidekick cat Zanzibar. The traditional story has made its way to the iPad with a wonderful adaptation that takes advantage of the interactivity offered by Apple's tablet device. Children can choose to read the book themselves or have the voice of Jan Ziff read the story to them. Each page is filled with at least one tappable element that'll jump, move or make a noise when your child touches it. The storytelling is outstanding and the story is the perfect length for the younger set who can only sit still for a short period of time. My children loved the iPad storybook, and there's little doubt that Meet Heckerty sets a high standard for other children's books to follow. We got a chance to speak to Jan Ziff and Allan Davidson, the husband and wife team that brought the Heckerty series to the iPad. We asked them about their experience in adapting the popular children's story to the iPad and their future plans for the series. You can read the interview below. You can also find out more about Heckerty on her website. The Meet Heckerty app is available from iTunes for 99-cents. At that price, it's a must-have for parents with young children. Q: One the first things I noticed about the book is its excellent storytelling. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Heckerty story and the storyteller behind the app? A: The Heckerty stories do have a "secret sauce" - it's the great British oral storytelling tradition that goes all the way back to The Canterbury Tales through Alice in Wonderland to Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh, and recently to Harry Potter. Ann Rachlin created the Heckerty stories and refined them for many years in her renowned Fun With Music classes in London. Jan really was the original Fun With Music student, along with her two siblings, and often served as a test audience for ideas that were later integrated into Fun With Music, and became part of Ann's many records and books for 2-9 year-olds. That's where Jan learned to combine words with the rhythms of music, which you may not always hear but is definitely part of the what creates Heckerty's magic. And Ann's wonderful storytelling skills made all the difference as we developed and recorded the stories for this series. But to your question - it was in late in 2010 that Ann asked us whether we thought Heckerty could be brought to life on an iPad or iPhone. We loved the idea, did some research, thought about it and decided to do it. It's been a fascinating ride with all kinds of unexpected turns and plot twists but Heckerty's now out the door and everybody that's seen the app so far has loved it, something we've all found tremendously rewarding! Q: Did you use iBooks Author to develop the book? If so, can you summarize your experience with the tool? If not, how did you bring the book from printed pages to digital format? A: No, we didn't use iBooks Author for several reasons - first, it wasn't available when we launched, second, even though iOS was the dominant and most creative platform, it was clear that there would be other competing operating systems and that we'd need to serve them. That's how we ended up using Flash for this project. And Flash turned out to have been a great decision - it let us go straight from the original text and Ann's storytelling to the "living" graphics and child-friendly form factor that distinguish the iPhone and iPad and other mobile devices. We could really bring out the rich interactivity and audio that these devices are so perfectly suited to. From a production and technical perspective, we had to shorten and tweak them so that they'd work well, then let Colin and Dave, our extraordinary programmer and animator team do their magic with the images, design and the audio we had developed -- the collaboration turned into Meet Heckerty and additional stories that are already in production. Q: As someone who now has experience with both traditional and digital media, what do you think of the iPad? Will it replace or complement printed books? A: We think the iPad is arguably the most exciting development in the history of personal computing. From its form factor, the screen resolution and the superb audio in the latest version, the iPad is changing the way stories can be told and the way they are told. Will the iPad and similar devices completely replace the printed book? We don't think so but it will continue to rapidly take over many of the functions that many print products like books, magazines and newspapers have traditionally provided. And the reason is simple, we think - where the iPad offers a substantially better experience, people will naturally gravitate to it, and over time, the capabilities of the iPad will both grow rapidly and the cost will drop dramatically. There will always be people who want a book, who enjoy the smell and the heft of a book, and love to see rows of spines on shelves. And then there are the voracious readers who could never take 12 printed books on vacation with them, but who can easily take an iPad - each sees different benefits in the book experience, each for different reasons. We also believe that the iPad is changing the way stories are told. And that rather than replacing or even complimenting printed books, the iPad and similar devices will have material written and produced for them, bringing the best of the story and leveraging the strength of the device to better tell that story .... that's what we've tried to do with Heckerty. Q: What was your biggest challenge in producing the iPad version of the Heckerty story? Did you have to modify the storyline (make it longer or shorter, for example) to accommodate the digital reading experience? A: We shortened and tightened the story to suit the iPad and how kids use the devices - the most pleasant surprise was how well-suited the Heckerty stories turned out to be for the iPad and iPhone - the biggest challenge on from a story perspective was letting the story's strengths come through and let the iPad make each one a unique experience. Q: Do you have plans to bring additional titles to the iPad? A: Absolutely!! Several stories are already in production - the next one to appear will be "Heckerty Cook" (that's the working title). Let's say that Heckerty's cooking skills and menus leave a lot to be desired ... and her cousins decide to fix the problem. Until you see the story, we'll leave the ingredients of the story to your imagination, but we can tell you that we still break down laughing every time we come to some of the scenes as we work on them! Hopefully, you and your audience will have time to talk about Heckerty again once Heckerty Cook ships!
Why I play Star Wars: The Old Republic
I believe I'm like most people when I say that I cling to nostalgia. I love it when parts of my adolescence are made into movies or video games. Yes, despite it being an explode-y Michael Bay movie, I loved Transformers, and I can't tell you how many times I watched Lord of the Rings when Peter Jackson adapted J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece into a blockbuster. But despite Ghostbusters' status as my favorite single movie of all time, the original Star Wars trilogy had more impact on my childhood than anything else in my life. I still get childhood chills when I think about it. From the music to the action figures, I loved them all. I still have a picture of me at six years old riding an AT-AT. Yes, even at six, I knew exactly what an AT-AT was. And although I called a lightsaber a light-saver, I grew up with Star Wars entrenched in my psyche. It was only natural that when the video games revolving around the series came out, I would take up that cause. You guys remember the crazy wireframe Death Star trench arcade? You'd better believe I was there playing that. When Star Wars entered the MMO space, I was there with bells on. But it's not just this longing to recapture my childhood that propels me to that galaxy far, far away in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The spice addiction runs quite a bit deeper.
Daily iPad App: Desi Leaves Town is a surprisingly elegant puzzle game
Desi Leaves Town, available on the App Store now, has done something remarkable. It surprised me. The colorful screenshot above might suggest that it's a kids' storybook app, but it's not. In fact, most of the kids I know would find its story boring. Instead, Desi Leaves Town is an experiment that combines art, literature, and puzzles in a compelling way. Compelling but not perfect. The story, which is based on a French novel, is sometimes hard to follow, with many flowery words. Some puzzles are confounding, too. That could be a result of the game's style, but a few smarter design choices would make them more fun. But even the questionable design choices are bold and interesting. The charming script is well acted, and the game's absurdity (Desi is an aristocratic frog determined to improve his tiresome urban existence) is excellently counter-weighted by the heavy themes being dealt with. There's a lot to experience in Desi Leaves Town, a fascinating title that's more than it seems. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if you favor art and the intellectual, and are willing to forgive a few design errors, spend the $3.99 to give Desi Leaves Town a try.
Storyboard: The other gatekeepers
If there's one thing that I've proven incapable of doing with tabletop gaming, it's remembering the names of NPCs. Not the ones related to this week's adventure, mind you; those I remember just fine. But throw out a big signature NPC and I suddenly find myself completely blank. It's bad enough that the only character I can think of off the top of my head is Caine from Vampire: the Masquerade, who mostly occupies a spot in my head for totally unrelated reasons. I can't help but think that if some clever GM tried to insert a major storyline character into an adventure, I'd wind up being the guy in the party who asked someone breathtakingly important if I could borrow some money. In the case of MMOs, I often have a bit more of an advantage. After all, Statesman and my character have a bit more interaction in City of Heroes than my characters in other games have with the setting-specific NPCs that I'd really like to be able to name off the top of my head. But even though I can remember who Thrall is, he suffers from the exact same problem as all the others -- as long as I'm not playing him, he's just plain not important.
The joys of scripting the apocalypse: A behind-the-scenes look at Fallen Earth
What's it like to have a post-apocalyptic landscape as your writing canvas? According to Marie Croall, it's pure heaven. Fallen Earth's lead designer opened up to Rock, Paper, Shotgun about the joys of writing and designing the myriad of quests for the game, as well as the free-to-play transition, plans for PvP, and the dynamic world events. Croall is part of a slimmed-down team of 12 developers who currently develop Fallen Earth's content. Saying that the team is always trying to "push the envelope" when it comes to the stories told, she notes that each area contains the imbued spirit of each writer: "I worked on a lot of the conflict towns early on and we knew that this was a place for people to kill each other, so a lot of the missions ended up being really thinly veiled insults." One of the aspects of Fallen Earth that Croall loves is how crazy the team can get. In one instance, the team decided to redo the starter town of Boneclaw by dropping a missile right into it. "We killed off all the players that were there, all the NPCs, and left it as a radiation zone for a good two months, while we made the new town. We flat out nuked it because it wasn't doing what we wanted it to do. Boom!" While Fallen Earth skirts the line between sandbox and theme park, Croall says the team is devoting a great deal of resources to beefing up the former. "The more features we add, the more ways for players to drive themselves, it makes the world better, it makes it feel like what we saw it as," she said.
Choose My Adventure: Story time!
Welcome back, Choose My Adventurers! Last week I took you on a leisurely stroll through my beginning days in Final Fantasy XIV's Limsa Lominsa and asked you lovely folks to choose what I should do next. Wouldn't you know it, you told me to go and finish up the storyline. So that's exactly what I did! This week, however, by popular demand, I'm going to be doing less play-by-play re-enactment and giving more of my impressions on whether the game is... you know... good. So strap yourselves in and head on past the cut and let's see what Eorzea had in store for me this week.
The Soapbox: The battle for story
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. When I was in grad school, one of my favorite classes spent a couple of sessions talking about the use and importance of story in teaching. It opened my eyes to the fact that stories are one of the most universal elements of the human experience, from antiquity to modern times, ranging from a little kid playing with toys to an adult penning a novel. We simply love to tell and listen to stories -- they grab our attention, spark our imagination, teach us valuable lessons, and create lasting memories. But somewhere along the years, something went horribly wrong when it came to MMOs and stories. MMOs were always supposed to be the ultimate platform for storytelling, as both developers and players could pitch in to weave epic sagas, and for a while that seemed to be the case. Lately, however, I've seen a movement that is thrashing hard against stories in MMOs, typically using one of the following two statements: "Get your stupid story out of my game!" or "Stories are better left to other forms of entertainment." It's made me a sad panda to realize that MMO storytelling is under attack by the very players who should embrace it, and often they're acting as if they're being dragged, kicking and screaming, into future MMOs where story is placed as a priority. Make no mistake: The battle for story is on, and the stakes have never been higher.
The Secret World shares details on sharing stories
While it's not the poster child for story in MMOs, The Secret World is putting a big emphasis on giving players an engaging and in-depth story to enjoy as they unravel conspiracies and search for the truth. A new developer diary by Ragnar Tornquist explains how the story is woven into every element of the game, from the simple introduction of quests right down to the mechanics of fighting enemies. Tornquist emphasizes that the entire setting of the game is in many ways based solely upon storytelling, on myths and urban legends and half-remembered stories of youth. One of the development goals for the game is to keep players digging, investigating the story and piecing it together. According to the diary, every mission opens with a fully voiced and motion-captured cinematic, and aside from the main story missions, players can tackle these challenges in any order, allowing for players to have unique stories as they make their way through the labyrinth of half-truths. It's an interesting look behind the curtain, and it should give players looking forward to The Secret World a few more ideas to be excited about.
One Shots: Storyteller
I'm always captivated with NPC life in MMOs -- what these not-so-essential characters are doing in the background of our unbridled heroism. Here's a charming scene in Lord of the Rings Online's Hobbiton, where a matronly storyteller is spinning a yarn for two fascinated children and one sleeping slacker. My only regret is that you never hear the story; I guess that's between these characters and them alone. This past week, Massively writers spotlighted some of their personal favorite One Shots. Starting tomorrow will be free-for-all week for you, our readers. Send any eye-catching, beautiful, scary, or generally epic screenshot to oneshots@massively.com, and we'll pick the best of the best for this week's One Shots! %Gallery-112285%
In the beginning: Guild Wars 2 shows off Ascalon Catacombs intro cinematic
Dungeons without context tend to just blend in with the other 55,000 instances we've run in our MMO careers, so a gripping backstory can make all the difference in how memorable a good dungeon run can be. ArenaNet has released a new introductory cinematic for Guild Wars 2's Ascalon Catacombs that helps bring players -- those both unfamiliar to the Guild Wars lore and heavily steeped in it -- up to speed. A Charr narrates a slice of history from the first game, leading up to how this dungeon was created and why it's so full of teed-off ghosts. In an attached developer blog, Horia Dociu tells us why these cinematics aren't just window dressing but essential to the experience: "These cinematics play at the key moments of the story mode in each of the eight dungeons in Guild Wars 2, setting the mood and delivering valuable info. Stylistically, we're pushing the concept of a visual storybook as a form of communicating to the player -- we want the cinematics to feel like moving paintings." You can watch the full intro to Ascalon Catacombs after the jump!
Engaging the brain: Funcom talks about the immersiveness of story in The Secret World
"No designer could ask for more to draw upon," The Secret World's Joel Bylos says. "This world, our world, is the greatest resource of them all." And so begins a fascinating trip down the dark alleys of storytelling in Funcom's upcoming MMO. In a dev diary posted at MMORPG.com, The Secret World team suggests it's more interesting to set the game in our world instead of in rehashed fantasy lands. By embracing the concept of "everything is true," the writers open the door to every conspiracy theory, every urban legend, and every branch of pseudoscience known to man. "The story is exploration. The story is discovery," Bylos promises. He says that the ultimate goal of the storytelling team is to get players to stop mindlessly clicking and to start engaging the story on a conscious level. This includes investigating events, hunting for clues and solving puzzles. No, this isn't Scooby-Doo Online (although that would be awesome). It's also interesting to note that every character in the game has full voice-over and motion capture as a way to pull you into the story instead of jolt you out of it. Bylos also outlines the different types of missions, which include stealth and infiltration, action, investigation, and story. [Thanks Even!]
Blurb app creates multimedia stories on iPhone
Blurb is best known for self-publishing books, but a new iPhone app expands the company's scope to mobile storytelling. Blurb Mobile for iPhone and iPod touch allows you to take photos, video and audio from the iPhone, including from apps such as Instagram, Hipstamatic and Photoshop Express, and turn them into a visual book that can be shared via email, Twitter or Facebook. Blurb is a free download and allows you to have up to eight images, a 30-second audio clip per image and a 10-second video clip per story with seven themes to choose from. An in-app purchase of US$1.99 will net you up to 15 photos, a 2-minute audio clip per image and three video clips up to 30 seconds each per story along with an additional eight themes. The app itself is easy to use, and it's very stable. After creating the slideshow, you can upload it to Blurb's site for sharing. A very nice feature is that you can make changes to the slideshow; the app will update it to the same location on Blurb's site for you, so you do not have to change any shared URLs. There are a few minor drawbacks, mainly that the text size for captions is much too big and obscures a good bit of the image when posted online. Check out this test slideshow from a recent trip to New York City to see the app in action.
EVE Evolved: Three years of EVE Evolved
A few days shy of three years ago, I joined Massively and published the very first edition of this column. Since April 27th, 2008, EVE Online players have received their weekly dose of EVE Evolved every Sunday at 6 p.m. EDT. I still remember the first few articles as if they were published only a few months ago, and three years on I'm almost surprised that the column is still going strong. I often worry about running out of ideas, but as the column's name suggests, EVE is continually evolving and providing new things to discuss. The column now houses over 150 articles on a huge range of topics, from in-depth multi-part guides drawing from first-hand experience to expansion speculation, opinion pieces and even stories. As usual, I'm celebrating the anniversary of the column by running a competition for readers. With the column's readership having grown a lot over the years, I'll be expanding the prize pool this year by giving away three massive mystery prizes worth over 500 million ISK each to three lucky entrants. To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment stating what your favourite EVE Evolved article this year was, what topic you'd like to see covered in a future edition of the column, or what in-game player or organisation you'd like to see featured in an EVE Spotlight interview. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, but there's no need to post your character name here. The winners will be contacted via email and their names will be announced in this post on Sunday the 1st of May. UPDATE: Congratulations go to Uniqdragon, mdubs28 and Thorium88, who will be contacted via email to arrange receipt of their prizes. In this week's retrospective EVE Evolved, I look back at some of the highlights from the third year of the column.
