I’ve spent a little time with the new Ghostbusters game and have had a pretty good experience so far. It certainly captures the tone and vibe of the films. The designers made a smart choice right off the bat: the player assumes the role of a raw recruit to the team (ala Battlefield: Bad Company) instead of jumping into the skin of one of the beloved, iconic characters. After all, the ironic, wisecracking, and sharply written quartet of Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Harold Ramis is what made the original films snap and pop. This is essentially an interactive version of Ghostbusters 3.
But once again, the solution is also the problem. Because by crafting a well-written script and story, Ramis and Ackroyd have made the player- character essentially meaningless, an impediment to getting on with the plot. This is obvious right from the start, where you team up with one of the original Ghostbusters to rid a hotel of spooks and start your training. Over and over, the NPC will stop and cool their heels while you fumble for the action that will advance the story to the next set piece. Sure, you might feel like bumbling noob member of the squad and a real member of the team, but there’s no getting around the fact that the story is going to play by the script, it’s just a matter of how skillfully you can facilitate it. In the case of Ghostbusters, maybe the experience of dipping into that happy, snarky world is reward enough.
A well-crafted story has rules, it has structure, it has beats that must be hit at certain times. Virtually every great story in film, literature, television, or theatre has followed the four-act, beginning/middle/climax/ending structure. Likewise, every successful example of storytelling has characters who fit into the structure, who play roles that advance the story or create the conflict or provide the subplot. There really is no getting around it. The great novels or films or plays might do a better job at hiding the structure, making it seem spontaneous…but it’s there.
Those players–and I’m often one of them–who lament lack of compelling story in games need to be reminded that the tradeoff for a great story is lack of meaningful choice by the player. The more choice and freedom you hand over to the player, the more you give up control over structure, pacing, emotional clarity, and coherent character development…and pretty soon, the power of your story dribbles away. If you want to play a memorable character, one with wit, intelligence, consistency and emotional truth, that character will have to be written. That kind of character does not arise from a series of binary choices or assigning +5 points to empathy.
“Open world,” “sandbox” or “God games” (such as the Grand Theft Auto series, or The Sims series) make the assumption that giving the player more-or-less complete autonomy is satisfying enough that it will make up for the lack of compelling narrative, but for many people, these games eventually pale because there is no real structural drive towards resolution. Bring the narrative to the forefront (as happens in GTA4) and the sandbox elements seem perfuctory or meaningless.
I’ve played a lot of games lately–Prototype, Red Faction: Guerilla, InFamous–whose writers seem confused about the difference between a concept and a story. “Guy who gets caught in a explosion and winds up with super powers and can shoot electricity out of his arms” is a hook, but it’s not a story. Adding colors to the electricity and additional powers and having him fight incrementally stronger enemies is not a plot. It might be cool, and it’s certainly fun to play a badass dude who can claw and shred his way through New York City–but it isn’t a satisfying story.
There are certainly some games that more-or-less successfully walk the highwire between scripted narrative and player autonomy, and where both elements contribute equally to the experience. Recently, I thought Fable 2 struck a good balance–the story arc was set but the player character was allowed to develop in ways that seemed meaningful. Of course, Bioshock brilliantly managed the trick of making a lack of player autonomy the central conceit of a classically structured narrative. There are some Asian games (Ico, Shadow of the Collossus) and indie games (Flower, Braid) where many traditional story elements (language, character development, forward-moving structure) are jettisoned and where a great deal of emotional resonance somehow comes through the dream-like states in which these games exist.
In a few years, when AI complexity has caught up with graphical richness, we’ll have the potential for some truly interesting open-world games. Imagine NPCs in the Sims having more than a radial dial’s-worth of behavioral choices: every interaction would be as surprising and as ripe with drama, conflict, and surprise as those in our real lives.
