A day not too long ago I was playing Fallout 3, and while enjoying the game itself, I started to feel some distance between the iconic Fallout and myself. Or was it between the iconic world and Fallout 3 itself? Get off my lawn, you say. How could that be? It is set in that world!

After the obligatory self-study of “am I a bad person now?” sort, it began to dawn on me.

It is the viewpoint of our protagonist. Not the story with its flaws – that’s just a good overall scapegoat for elusive “wtf was wrong there? -observations one can’t easily put a finger on. Just the viewpoint.

Fallout 3 thrusted us into first person perspective, dropping us face first into the groundlevel with rabid dogs, madmen and fallen society at fingertips. All very close range, often running to our face to maybe shoot it off or perhaps to just eat it, and not in the partychick kind of way.
On paper, close personal sweaty action in Fallout world sounds good, but there seems to be a trap. It actually gets too personal. Player does not get a chance to distance himself from the world on personal level, whereas in previous Fallouts the distanced isometric view gave the player a wide look at desolate expanses, with close human factors essentially removed. It is easier to feel hopeless and alone there, death of ground itself overburdening your senses. First person perspective keeps you too aware and too busy and too there and now to see the forest from trees.
That contrast between how I experienced those games screams essence of Fallout world to me – it is a world of bigger perceived pictures, because individuals and tangible details have been burned off the face of the earth. To experience the broken world, you must look further into distance, lest you notice the remnants of humanity mixed in the sand under your boots. Every now and then a part of that world in pain comes around the corner and violence is exchanged or traded, but all that is part of the land, too.

Again, story itself is almost irrelevant to this basic feel of the world. I’m guessing it has to do with the amount of visual information versus some curious aspect of the game world. Wanted mood and feel of it, I think – you could make a Fallout game in first person, but it should feel and sound more dreamlike and rid of distractions we could keep ourselves busy with. Remove the chance to behave and react with things like in normal world, and we get the needed detachment and alienation. Feed the world with noises of inhuman world and clear absence of sounds from human life, remove visual cues of the same human life as we know it, force us to make choices that sidestep our learned behaviour and you’ll catch us with our pants in knots around our ankles. I urge you to play Defcon and compare your findings. Causes and effects ending in no resolutions.

Also, remember how Another World felt like when you played it for the first time? That game crept up your neck like a f*cking spider.

After nuclear fire, whole humanity is cleansed into an abstraction, a pieced-together non-person memory we can try to understand and let ourself feel something about. Actual individuals we come across are deteriorated into huddled masses in desert – not humans to relate with, not with our minigun ever-obediently waiting for our choice. They pose either a threat or means of survival.
In that sort of a world stories don’t carry weight, because story is always a human journey. A survived journey in a world that glows in the dark is series of events you didn’t die of, and that’s quite enough – they form a memorable half-story by themselves, regardless of the order you survive them. Play the world and become part of it.

That funny man-animal who uses my character sheets as insulation between soda and desk, Alvan, hit some excellent points on storytelling and then casually threw the awfully hot ball to me.

Cutscenes, he said. Why on earth do games rely on cutscenes, he asked. Bloody good question, and while I have no literal facts as such, I can only speculate and rant – but since speculation and rant makes better entertainment than mere facts, nobody loses. Also, the subject matter itself is based on things that are difficult to quantify unless you’re Dr. Phil, and even then you might get into arguments.

Exhibit A:

You make a game, say, FPS action wonderfest of sort. It’s basically based on you shooting things. A conclave is formed, features written into stone, weapons of war decided and armies constructed on little patches of paper. But — what now! someone is suddenly startled, points to the sky and calls out – “It’s well advisable to know why you’re shooting!”. You present this groundbreaking epiphany to the masters. From behind the curtains of management a loud “Oh, a backstory is needed, then!” sounds and echoes down the hallways. “A world with a reason, with personae our hero can feel at ease with!”

Klaxons wail, loudspeakers shout go-words! Trained monkeys scurry to their tasks, attending meetings and pushing tasklists and making schedules, everyone with a glowing sense of importance inside their hot and bothered hearts. We are creators of worlds, rulers of immersion, masters of gameplay!

Amidst the scurrying and goal-oriented teamwork, sudden plea is heard behind numerous concept art sketches and level design ideaboards: “How do we progress the story, how do we, pray, tell the player what happened, what his character feels beneath his forged iron carapace, what will happen now? Please, masters, tell us!”

Masters flinch, designers are summoned, and hidden under the shadows of their hoods they confer.

-This iss the best way. Trusst me. A movie within the game. Many moviess. Moving picturres carry worrds. We giev our art to massters of moving picturss and they do us moviess. We put moviess between levelss! Where loadingbarr goes!

Masters stand proud, a path has been found and it is golden, and it will bring them numerous coins of gold.

Designers go on about their business, designing core gameplay, weapon balancing, character perks, progress curves, everything their soon-to-be laid golden egg is made of.  A writer is hired, a professional master of words and worlds. He waves his hand over the vistas they have created and behold, a world is born! He writes it down, and he sees it is all good. He collects his coins and goes home to breed and procrastinate some more.

The golden words are spread out to all who make the game.

“This is our world, this is how it must feel like! It is .. Quite blue!”

Trained monkeys nod and add some blue, anxious to see what their world will be like in the moving pictures that bring their gameworld to life. What will it tell them? They concentrate on getting the best mesh topology for their characters, most cleverly blended IK animations and making sure there are no otherworldly invisible collision objects laying around. Reset XForm buttons are pressed, with sweat on forehead and no hands that dare swipe it off. Production is at full blast, and everything depends on this game. It must be the new benchmark in its genre! Hands clench in fists, manhours crunched.

“You have to have the best shaders! You have to tighten up graphics! Wait – that looks good, give it a name! Now, have our swiftest courier to take it to our marketing department!”

The big wheel rolls on.

Movies arrive from the golden lands far across the distant waters. Everyone is gathered in the big hall adorned with fantastical mechanic devices that illuminate the great wall with moving images and fill their eager ears with sound. The movies are good. They watch them all – twentyone of them – at one go. It is a beautiful, war-torn story of lost cause hovering above a brotherhood of men, who only wish to be brothers regardless of color or stature – to bear the burden with your mates in their chipped armours.

Lights flicker back, audience is thrown onto their feet, cheering and applauding. Their Game now has a story, a movie within their play, and movies tell stories! It all makes sense and it all feels so very good.

Game becomes gold, and is shipped to far-flung countries and coins change hands.

Reviews come in.

“Graphics are ace, and DOF and Shaders and Lens Flares are amazing feats of technology! Other than those and nice cutscenes, it’s a basic shooter. 6/10″

Wail, gnashing of teeth. Does not the acclaimed critics understand their words, their story? Are they blind?

No, they are not. You are blind, you wacky bats. You just made a point of having neatly structured levels, clever AI and gave places the same names as your precious and expensive cutscenes have. How did you treat the cutscenes? Are they movies of their own? Connected to gameplay moments player just experienced? Probably somewhat, but it is my humblest of opinions that cutscenes serve no storytelling value from the games point of view if A) the gameplay itself is not treated as part of the same story arc present in cutscenes, and B) the player experience is forgotten.

“No, the experience is there! We made sure the gun recoils realistically and walls topple majestically! Our end bosses are bigger than the end of universe! Surely the player experiences it all!”

You silly clown. Did you prepare the player for the cutscene? Did you stop and think about players role in game, and in cutscene? Yes, his role in cutscene. You strip his soul with gunplay, drive him mental with interactivity, make his eyes sore from effects and his mind dented with immersion, and then there’s AI that’s more natural than your grandmother and WHACKBANG you snatch it all from his hands. You force him into invalid cripple with no limbs. Passive audience, away from all that action and control and hoohaa. Did you consider the gameplay levels as storyarcs? Did you build up the tension, introduce twists, give the player a resolution, a wind-down moment, did you design the gameplay cool-off to force him to bloody stop and relax, leaning back on his seat with his hands off the goddamn gamepad so you can present him a pre-chewed bit of storytelling, fit for the state you just left him in?

No, of course you did not, you monkey.

Cutscenes suffer from their own history. When they were new and snazzy, they were selling points themselves. Remember Diablo 2? I remember more people talking fervently about the CG intro than the game itself, before it was on the shelves.

These days, awesome graphics are  a baselevel expectation. You don’t sell the game with cutscenes alone. Yes, people want stories and immersion. Yes, cutscenes can work in conjunction with the progressing game world, but more often than not, they are more or less slapped between levels with some shared graphical assets to tie them into the level you just played or will play anysecondnow. Your AI buddies that couldn’t find their way out of doorway suddenly become lipsynched and motion captured marvels that put Hollywood to shame.

Now that I got to the whole damn point, I’ll take a cool break and write more tomorrow when I’m awake again. How does it feel, to get cut off just when it got interesting? Hoping for a comfortable arc here? A coherently constructed story? Hahaha.