Changing the Story - Interactive Narrative

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Shortly after I posted my GeekBeat.TV review of The Walking Dead Game I got a number of comments to the effect that people were disappointed by how little the story changed over the course of playing the game. I was pretty dumbfounded by this, as the degree of change was one of the things that impressed me the most; so much so that I wrote about it here, too.

After having given it a few weeks of consideration, I’ve come to believe people have the wrong idea about interactive storytelling, or at least that they have unrealistic expectations. There’s this sense that “the story completely changes when you select different options!” means really radical changes, like in one branch you abandon Atlanta and go off to a totally different city with different characters, while another branch has you stay in the area.

That kind of branching story can be done, but not in a game like The Walking Dead Game. That’s more the kind of difference you’d see in a massively multiplayer online game like World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, where the games were designed with massive budgets and enough staff to be able to cope with wildly diverging paths of that nature.

The Walking Dead is a much more tightly focused game, and it works within some limitations. You’re always going to start the game in that police car, and you’re always going to end episode 1 in [SPOILER REDACTED]. Nothing you do during the game can change that, except die, and I’d assume you’d try again if that happened.

Instead what changes is Lee’s relationships with the other survivors, and even who the group of survivors is composed of. Did so-and-so live or die? Did you stick up for the one family during the confrontation in the pharmacy so that he has your back later on? Did you call someone a nasty name, earning a black mark in her book that she’ll remember later? Did you lie to Clementine or tell her the brutal truth early on? All of these things are noted and remembered by the game, and really change how people interact with Lee as you play him through events.

THAT is how interactive narrative changes, even when settings don’t. Now, where’s episode 2?

How is the Story in Diablo III?

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I’ve never been a fan of the Diablo series, but I’m also woefully undereducated on it. I played the first one for a short time and didn’t like it, but never bothered looking at the second. I have to admit I’m very curious about Diablo 3, and most curious in particular about the story in it, and in the series as a whole. Have you had any experience of it? Let me know in the comments!

Camp NaNoWriMo

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I’ve been thinking for a while that I was at my most productive in this whole writing thing back in November for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and that it’d be really nice to get some of that high intensity output back. Thankfully I’m not the only one that feels that way. There are many initiatives throughout the year to do a novel in a month, since not everyone wants to do it in November, or like me, they want to do it more than just once a year. 

So this year I’m going to give Camp NaNoWriMo a try. It is pretty much what it sounds like; NaNoWriMo in the summer, a mental summer camp where you escape into your writing. Sounds pretty good to me. Just as a side note, NaNoWriMo isn’t the only group doing the novel-in-30-days thing in June; see also JuNoWriMo.com.

This won’t change anything for my writing; I’ll still hold myself to everything I’m currently doing. (Even WIP500, which I haven’t updated here in a month, but I do still have all my blog posts I can use to update my word count as soon as I have time to do it.) The one change I’ll have to institute is a division between editing work and writing work. I’ll have a Camp NaNoWriMo project and I’ll be continuing to edit things on the side. Those editing things will count towards WIP500 but not towards CNaNoWriMo.

Anyone else feeling crazy enough to jump into this? Or is summer too busy a time for you? What about this coming November? Any NaNoWriMo 2012 people reading this? Let me know in the comments.

The Avengers Need No Avenging

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Joss Whedon is one of those guys who just makes everything so easy. I got back earlier this evening from seeing The Avengers, and man is it good. It has all the classic Whedonesque elements of action and humor, characters and story that make me such a fan of Buffy and Angel and Firefly.

It’s making me think I should brush up on more of Whedon’s shows and maybe some comics too; I try to keep an eye on my own weaknesses, and one area I’m especially worried about in my work right now is pacing. Whedon is great at pacing.

I kind of want to write a review of this film, but to analyze the story properly would require a whole ton of spoilers. Instead I’ll just leave it at this, a brief discussion of the inspiration it has given me for my writing. Maybe I’ll review the story in a few weeks, when spoilers aren’t such an issue.