An Ironically Boring and Not-So-Brief History of Entertainment (part 2)

The original point I wanted to make when I began this post was to bemoan the lack of quality storytelling in a lot of the recent games I have played; while the mechanics and graphics have increased exponentially, I feel like the truly great stories that used to be told in days when they couldn't just rely on graphics and gameplay to push the narrative, are lost.  Which is a shame, because as I said before, video games have the potential to be the absolute pinnacle of entertainment.

Look at it this way: every form of storytelling that has come before was superseded by an advancement in the teller's ability to create an environment in which the listeners could immerse themselves.  Do you want to see a quick time line?  I think you do!!!  Keep in mind that I am not a legitimate historian and this may all just be a massive pile of triceratops droppings, through which you may or may not be willing to sift to find the (poison) berries.  Not a great reward for putting up with all of the shit, right?  So it's the perfect metaphor for my blog!

We'll start with the genesis of story-telling, which was - oddly enough - telling stories.  Simple, right?  This oral tradition was eventually overtaken by the written word after the invention of the printing press by an enterprising - albeit ex-communicated - German Johannes Gutenberg and his movable type, which for the first time allowed the masses to own books of their own.  It wasn't simply mass appeal that won the day for the written medium, though; it was the fact that reading allowed the hearer of the story to become the teller of the story as well, in their own minds.  Whereas they were previously tied to the vocal stylings of whatever itinerant storyteller happened to wander in and ply their trade, with a book they were able to use their imaginations to create every aspect of the tale - other than the actual events it detailed.

Books and the written word were eventually replaced though, with the advent of the Radio - which, from an actual story-telling standpoint was sort of a step backwards from my perspective.  What real difference was there between a radio broadcast and a story-teller sitting on a stool and doing his damnedest to earn an evenings meal?  Outside of the obvious commercial interruptions and the ability to reach a far greater audience, the differences were seemingly negligible.  But that wider audience, plus the added bonus that you no longer actually had to read, except when the oppressive, torture-happy Junior High School teachers demanded it, was enough to catapult the Radio into the upper echelon of the entertainment media pantheon.  But unlike it's predecessor's, its time on the throne was destined to be short-lived; not unlike the Baratheon-Lannister Dynasty.



Because flying into the scene with beating, leathery wings and fire bursting from it's gaping, razor-toothed maw came an invincible dragon bearing a silvery-haired goddess upon it's back to ascend the entertainment throne: television.  No longer was imagination even necessary for telling a story: every aspect of it could be controlled by those doing the telling, which meant that every one saw it the way that it was meant to be seen; and while the listeners were left to sit and discuss about the meaning and the intent of the story, no longer could there be any debate about concrete building blocks of the tale itself: what the main characters looked like, what their voices sounded like, and how they felt about the events which they were forced to endure.

Television then gave birth to a monstrous wyvern even more fearsome than its own legendary self, Film; and while occasionally - see the last 5 years or so of the television-al renaissance - the old beast launches into the air to remind us of how terrifyingly adept it can still be at devouring the attention spans of its entertained victims, Film still reigns supreme because of it's shorter time frame - allowing the viewers to experience the beginning and ending of the story in usually no more than 2 hours, every Peter Jackson epic notwithstanding - and it's monstrous budgets.  I should mention that I am perfectly aware that Film was invented before television, but after TV broadcasts became regular it dethroned Film for a few decades as King of the Reeled Mountain; and in the interests of simplicity (read: the titular laziness and semi-competence) I chose to ignore the historical timeline, so that I didn't have to write a gigantic exposition about how and why it occurred...instead simply trading it for a barely shorter one.  Hurrah!
   
Quick aside: it's interesting to me that the American Television Renaissance - which began with the Sopranos and 24, and hopefully hasn't ended with Mad Men and Breaking Bad (and my personal favorite, Justified, which is on its final season) - occurred not by trying to mimic film's ability to tell an entire story within a single time-frame but by embracing the differences between the two mediums and building longer, more complex stories in which the audience could drift like a crocodile in a Serengeti oasis.  Yes, that is an odd, mostly inapplicable simile; but I stand by it.  Because I like crocodiles.  Think about it: most of the great, influential, or popular TV shows from the 50's to the late 90's all had one thing in common: episodic narrative structure.  You knew going in that in this episode the hero would be faced with a problem, and he or she would figure it out by the end; sometimes it might take a second or third episode to reach a final resolution, but those were promotional stunt-aberrations which varied outside the comforting, pillowy norm.

But within the last fifteen years, television studios in the U.S. finally realized what most of their British and Japanese-Cartoon counterparts already knew: that audiences preferred seeing a single, complete story-line with a definitive beginning and ending, over watching the same group of people endlessly repeat similar shenanigans over the course of a decade or so before finally petering out into a charade of its younger self.  I think the hesitation to adopt the currently successful narrative style of season long story-telling was due mostly to the fear that it would be impossible to catch the interest of new viewers, who might be stumbling into the events in the middle of the season -and thus the story (although it should be noted that, from a strictly story-telling standpoint, that is often the most interesting place to start, in media res, which is one of the thousands of reasons why the original Star Wars trilogy was more entertaining than its abominable prequel trilogy); but the advent of digital medium, Netflix, Hulu, DVD's and - if we're all being honest with ourselves - digital piracy at one time or another, allows us to catch up at any time.


And if I could be permitted an aside to my honestly slightly-too-long original aside, is there anything worse than the corporate machine latching onto a term we sort of used sarcastically amongst ourselves and acting like they were in on the joke?  Like they did with "binge-watch."  It makes you feel like one of the first fans of a band that started out in relative obscurity - like, say Kings of Leon during their first three albums - only to look at all of their new fans with a sort of prideful disdain, as if they could never truly appreciate them the way that you currently do and thus they are inferior to you.  I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it happens.  (That's a great documentary and a very useful study into the decision making processes of most of the music industry, aside from unintentionally being an interesting commentary on just the sort of arrogant group-think I just mentioned).  Basically what I'm saying is, I hate seeing every network advertise it's new season of a show by saying anything like, "Time to binge!"  Shut up, marketing majors; and stop stealing our inside jokes.

Which brings me to my main point: the next step in the evolution of the story-telling industry would be a medium which allows the viewer to experience the events in the same manner as in television or film - a masterful concoction of visual and auditory narrative - while actually being able to control and determine the direction of the narrative.  What is that, if not video games?

Why then are they still the socially-awkward-cousin-who-keeps-audibly-slurping-the-excess-spit-from-the-back-of-his-retainer-back-down-his-throat-when-you're-trying-to-make-a-move-on-the-hot-girl-at-the-junior-high-rec-center-dance of the entertainment family (my god, am I abusing hyphens);  the Rodney Dangerfield of storytelling mediums (I don't really have to say it, do I?  If you don't know what I mean, just Google his name, I guarantee you'll figure it out in under ten seconds)?

I think the largest reason is that they are still relatively new, and the technology has only recently reached a state which allows them to be a visually immersive experience for the players.  I mean, the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the best games ever made, but no one was looking at those 16-bit sprites and saying: "Wow, Link looks just like a real person!"  Compare that to now, when the cut-scenes from most new-gen games look almost as real as an actual film of fully developed human beings.  But that is going to change within the next decade, as you'll see more and more games with high profile actors and story-tellers involved in the development process.  What might not ever change though, and is the biggest reason that video games are relegated to the kiddy-table, is that they just don't have the budget to compete with the major motion picture and television studios for the hiring of talent; and they might not ever have it.  Think about it: why would Steven Spielberg waste years helping to develop a video game that's going to pay him 1/10th what he could make shooting a movie in three months?  Sure, there have been a few exceptions; but they are just that: exceptions.  For the most part, the A-list names of Hollywood have been reluctant to tie themselves to a video game, and when they do you most certainly do not see them hitting the talk show circuit to promote their new game, like they would if it were a film or TV show.

Bow before...this thing.

That's the nature of the business, and I've resigned myself to it; but one thing which I refuse to accept, and which I'm sure is a determining factor in  causing the major entertainment outlets to withhold their support from the development of video games, is the fact that - for the most part - most of the stories they are telling these days just aren't that compelling.  My prime example of this is Dragon Age: Inquisition which received rave reviews from all of the critical outlets, for both its gameplay (deservedly) and storytelling (...less deservedly so). No, you know what?  I'm not even going to try to be polite about it: that story was disappointingly narrow in its scope and short-sighted in its execution.  If it hadn't been for the developers adding level requirements to complete the quests that made up the main story arc, it would have taken me about two hours to complete the entire thing.  There is little to no creativity in any of it; they even recycle the villain from the previous game.  "Oh, it turns out that Corypheus wasn't killed!"  Really?  Cause what it looks like is you decided to reuse a lame enemy who had little to no involvement in the previous game in an attempt to make it look like you had been trying to tell a single, connected narrative the entire time."

What's truly disappointing was that, for a while, the gameplay was great, and exploring the first unlockable area of the world into which you are dropped truly was entertaining, but at a certain point you remember that all quests in a Bioware game devolve into a very simple formula: go to a specific point on the map, maybe solve a tiny, piddling little puzzle, kill something, and watch a cut-scene (if its a Main quest) or just get an informational pop-up (for the side quests).  There were multiple, expansive areas of differing terrains, but ultimately what you were asked to do in each of them was exactly the same - only the backdrop had changed.  But to be honest, I would have been able to overlook all of that if the story had been as well-crafted as any of the Mass Effect games, or even Link to the Past - which may have been simple in it's overall narrative, but everything you did had a purpose and a direct impact on the rest of the story.  The only real impact that you can have in the course of Inquisition is to decide on the aesthetics of the Skyhold fortress into which you eventually move, and whether or not you want Templars or Mages walking around inside of it.  Within the context of the story, you really have almost no ability to determine the outcome.  You just go to an area, fight some sword-fodder, watch a cut-scene with Corypheus, fight a boss, and watch another cut-scene.  I was so disappointed in the story that I will probably never play the game again.

Contrast that to the story of a game like Final Fantasy VII, which is the sole reason I continue to play the game again and again.  Sure, the graphics are outdated, you have to read every bit of dialogue because they didn't have voice-actors (which, given the terrible history JRPG's have with them, might be notch under the 'W' column), and the grinding, repetitive nature of the combat itself - not to mention the perpetual annoyance that was the thankfully-long-dead random enemy encounter - I still happily suffer through all of it, because I enjoy engulfing myself in the narrative of Cloud Strife and his quest of revenge/biological determination/personal discovery.  Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross  are equally superlative in their ability to tell an engaging, thought provoking narrative which overwhelms their by-modern-standards-admittedly-deficient gameplay.

You won't be believe this, but I have an opinion/theory on what I consider to be the dearth of adequate storytelling in the current video game industry.  It's the open-world, sandbox structure.  So much time is spent developing an expansive, diverse, and interactive world that the story - the very reason for which you ventured into the sandbox in the first place - becomes secondary.  See, in allowing the player to roam wherever they would like within the world, most developers use the Quest structure to tell the stories, be they the Main story or side stories.  These quests must start in a specific spot and end in a specific spot, and they generally last no more than thirty minutes.  They also can't be allowed to impact the larger world structure very much, since it would require so many simultaneous changes to the coding of the game itself as to be basically unfeasible.  Thus it becomes very easy to lose sight of the narrative and drown the player in endless fetch quests, and purposeless battles.  A prime example of this is Saints Row IV: Re-elected, which fronts itself as a satire of the Action-RPG game and narrative structure - even directly commenting on the repetitive nature of most sandbox game side quests - and for the most part succeeds; but even the development team at Volition was caught in the very trap which they were trying to mock: every single "side-quest" devolves into a character telling you to go to some new race-point, or havoc-marker, or enter another rift.  After realizing that you aren't actually involved in a real story with the side quests, merely completing repetitive, seemingly-random chaotic events throughout the city with no real purpose or meaning, I lost most of my interest in completing them - until of course the game glitched and deleted all of the outfits and clothing that I had spent all of my cache purchasing, and I discovered that I would need more subsequent cache to replace them all.  Then it happened again, until now: I pretty much only buy certain items at once and then save them as a custom outfit; everything else gets randomly deleted for no goddamn reason.



Which is not to say that games which follow the Quest-based narrative structure can't be compelling: my favorite game ever is still the Witcher 2, which strictly adheres to it, and the Bioware game Jade Empire has one of the best stories I've encountered - including a masterfully crafted twist on par with the ending of the Usual Suspects.  Although neither game takes place in a true, completely open world: you start in one enclosed region and move on to the next.  Sometimes you are able to travel back to previous areas for more exploration - using the Dragonfly in Jade Empire - occasionally it turns out to never really be necessarry - but others, as in the case of the Witcher 2 you are confined to the current region until the story there has run its course.  But you know what?  I'll take a limited ability to roam between regions over a lazily constructed narrative.

And that's why Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments was my favorite game so far on the Xbox One - again, so far; because, while the gameplay itself was restrictive and devoid of the freedom which a sandbox game generally affords, it allowed the narratives to be presented in an engagingly precise manner.  Which meant, incidentally, that while you might not always have a wide array of choices before you, every one of the choices which you made had a definite purpose and a direct impact on the narrative; and isn't that what we're all looking for in a good story-telling?