Good Storytelling – and the lack thereof – in video games

I’ve been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins lately, and a lot about it has reminded me of something I’ve been missing a lot of in games, lately: Story.

The games that I remember the most fondly from my childhood are those that had the best stories and character development. Gameplay in some of them might have been simple turn-based “Keep Pressing X” type controls, but the stories were what kept me playing them. My first introductions to PC games were also story-driven games. Some of the best stories I’ve seen in video games were in RTS games in which I might have been controlling entire armies, not just in RPGs where stories are “essential”. (Starcraft is an excellent example of a good, well-written RTS campaign)

The thing is, with the coming of multiplayer gaming, storytelling has pretty much been deemed unnecessary. The best examples of this are in the RTS genre, where the RTS of the past always had massive, story-driven single-player campaigns – campaigns that simply no longer exist in the modern versions.  If an RTS game even has a single player option or campaign at all, it nearly always seems plugged on as an afterthought, a repetitive little bit of narration plugged on what is essentially just a “against-the-computer” battle.  Without the story, there is nothing to make the player care about the characters or races.  It all turns into making a choice between the pure gameplay based advantages and disadvantages of each, rather than because the race itself means something to you.

As much as I love World of Warcraft, MMORPGs took the story out of the RPG just as much as multiplayer removed it from the RTS.  True, these stories might have a large, involved storyline put together by the developers, but the average player likely knows very little of it beyond the names of important bosses in dungeons.  (The exception to this, of course, would be roleplayers, who make it their business to know the lore of the game, but they are hardly the “average” players.)

Dragon Age has reminded me of just what I loved about all those old games with their involved stories and characters you couldn’t help caring about (or hating with a vengeance, as the case may be) – that it’s paired with good, fun, gameplay mechanics only adds to the fun of the game. It also brought to mind just how few truly story-driven games exist on the shelves these days, and just how much I wish there were more.

I’d like to see gaming get back to the point where story is not just an unnecessary and thoughtlessly added bit, but an essential part of games.

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