Halo 4 - Inside the Gaming Studio: Lead Writer Chris Schlerf Talks Master Chief

The Difference Between Design and Story while Making them Play Nicely

It€™s difficult to define what the ideal world is. I€™m a storyteller first and foremost, so I naturally gravitate towards story-driven games. But at the same time, some of the most compelling games I€™ve played have had no story at all. That said, if you are going to set out to create an experience where narrative is a crucial component, then I believe it€™s important to introduce it into the process early and consistently throughout. Good story design operates very differently than good game design. Even in the most non-linear fiction, there is still typically a sense of progression and causality. Story isn€™t as good at being modular in the same way that game design is €“ at least, not if you want to create a world with dramatic stakes, character development, etc€ many the sorts of things which make the tales we gravitate towards compelling. Getting those two traits in sync €“ the flexibility of game design and the relative rigidity of narrative dependencies €“ takes an awful lot of work and is a constant process. In the real world, the differences between the two disciplines aren€™t always clear or well understood. Coming from a film background, it took me a long time to understand why game production and film production have entirely different philosophies, and the same is true for narrative theory and game theory.
Harmony between Story and Mechanics is a Key to Creation
The process for how any game deals with story is completely unique to that particular project and team. I know people who€™ve worked on projects where story essentially was just the €˜icing€™ used to give context and flavor to the game€™s design, without much in the way of artistic aspirations or concern for the narrative€™s overall cohesion. And that€™s not in any way meant as a criticism; there are fantastic game developers who think that story just gets in the way of their vision, and that€™s perfectly valid from a creative point-of-view. But in working on a game where the fiction is such a fundamental part of its appeal, it would have been incredibly constricting in terms of what types of stories we could tell if the mechanics weren€™t one of the fundamental building blocks we had at our disposal. We€™ve been fortunate at 343 that our Design team is incredibly passionate about story. They€™ve not only been our greatest advocates, but they€™re also one of our most reliable sounding boards. They have provided some of the most in-depth feedback on even the smallest details of Halo lore. It€™s been an very collaborative relationship right from the beginning, and so that has created a lot of opportunities for both the use of existing mechanics to help articulate the story in new ways as well as the creation of new ones when our existing toolbox proved too restrictive . Sometimes, that interplay between story and game mechanics manifested as subtly as the way a player interacted with new characters like the Prometheans. The very nature of the manner in which the Forerunners are used in the sandbox today speaks volumes about who they are. You look at how the Knights are able to phase through the environment or the sorts of tactical maneuvers the Watchers employ, and those gameplay elements can provide players with a far deeper understanding of the artificial, militaristic nature of these antagonists more robustly than we€™d have time to do through just dialog, cinematics, etc. In a more substantial way, wherever it€™s been practical, we€™d work with Design to bend the typical shooter mechanics to allow us a chance to craft story moments where traditionally we might not be able to. We€™ve done a lot of storytelling with the Chief€™s HUD, for instance. In other cases, we€™d try to introduce elements into the environment like Sentinels that, by taking advantage of a player€™s natural desire to shoot at them, would create narrative possibilities in and of themself. And naturally, that collaboration with the designers went both ways as well. Frequently, Design would want to try something interesting in gameplay and ask us if it was something that would work inside the fiction. One factor that allowed us a tighter integration into the gameplay mechanics was that we wound up designing and implementing a lot of supporting content ourselves on the Narrative team. Things like VO placement, the creation of our €˜secondary story elements€™ (such as terminals, etc), various other narrative devices €“ a lot of that was us getting directly into the code, so it gave us a greater latitude for experimentation and fine tuning. Overall, the benefits of marrying story directly into the gameplay cannot be oversold. The traditional techniques (cinematics, mission dialog, et al) will always have their place, but expanding the palette to utilize the gameplay wherever possible takes advantage of the strengths of the form. It€™s the next evolutionary step of that old adage, €œShow, don€™t Tell.€ Suddenly, it becomes, €œPLAY, don€™t tell.€
Click "Next" for more...

Contributor
Contributor

Patrick Dane is someone who spends too much of his time looking at screens. Usually can be seen pretending he works as a film and game blogger, short film director, PA, 1st AD and scriptwriter. Known to frequent London screening rooms, expensive hotels, couches, Costa coffee and his bedroom. If found, could you please return to the internet.