Well this is just about the most depressing thing I've read in about
ever. The guy who wrote
Extra Lives -- which is a passionate, hopeful paean to games -- wrote this? What am I doing with my life.
I actually relate to his frustration, though, because while I'm not willing to concede that interactivity sabotages storytelling, there's no questioning that it is throwing wrenches in the genre's progress. His discussion of masking systems -- scenarios like "what if John Marsten wants to kill x important plot character" -- are spot on. It's important because you never, ever want the player to feel as though they lack control. At the same time, if you allow the player too much control, his choices can become trivial. In the Fallouts, for instance, if you kill one character and that character is staged to have a dramatic moment later, the design solution is often to play musical chairs: that character is replaced by another. That choice means very little.
Part of the solution to this may be to stop babying the player and
accept linearity as a viable option. No, goddamnit, you can't kill x important plot character because the story is more important than your infantile desire to run your getaway car into him! Augh! Okay, that may not be the best-received solution by players, but let's take
Shadow of the Colossus, a very tightly linear game that nonetheless gives the player the
feeling of a lot of freedom. Those moments you spend with your horse, traveling and simply contemplating the quiet world you're in, doing whatever you'd like, are incredibly atmospheric and meditative and serve a narrative purpose by heightening the crazy drama of the theatrical, linear fights with the colossi. So there's one example, at least, of how to do this effectively.
On a separate note, I am interested in Bissell's statement that the interrogations in L.A. Noire are not interested in punishing wrong responses, and want to encourage player expression. That's an idea I find very fascinating and would love to see developers pursue, and it's especially intriguing that someone dared to attempt to make that a part of a AAA game -- even if the execution, in this case, failed.
I guess I'm just glad there are concrete examples that prove to me that videogames can be a usefully storytelling art. It's one of those mysterious, numinous things I just can't break down and rationalize. Put a great story and great gameplay mechanics in front of me, and my brain goes: oh yeah, I want a piece of that thang.
I relate to this, very much, and I wonder if perhaps it isn't a cultural thing (which would put a hopeful spin on this). Tom Bissell is older than me and, I assume, you. Those who grew up with games, particularly RPGs have proven that they, and their art, were profoundly changed by that exposure. Perhaps we have more "buy-in" regarding game stories than our older cohorts, which would allow designers to spend less time trying to prove themselves and more time writing the kinds of stories we're moved by.
