Summary
As a medium, games are quite unlike many other creative mediums. Once it has passed from the hands of those who created it, it remains a dynamic object. It can be altered by those who play it, the layer of interactivity giving you endless ways of being experienced in a way its developers may never have expected.
Interactivity is key to the experience of a video game. To be a passive bystander to that experience takes away what makes video games so unique. In the pursuit of chasing the prestige of cinema, many games lose what makes them so unique. Not these games though. They relish in being a game, tying the depths of their storytelling with active gameplay.
The remake of Silent Hill 2 changes many aspects of the 2001 game it is based on, while keeping many others almost entirely unchanged. It is a game equal parts ambitious and faithful. But the core of what makes Silent Hill 2 so special remains, and that is the way in which the town of Silent Hill manifests around James.
The enemies are all based on his own dark thoughts, themes of the story pulled from them. But even the means of how you travel Silent Hill, whether you speed to the end, become overprotective of Maria, act reckless or not. These all feed into the ways James acts and, ultimately, the ending. There is no separating the gameplay from the narrative.
Fumito Ueda and his team, over the many studios they have inhabited, are well-known for their thought-provoking games. All of them bear these hallmarks, the quiet, desolate architecture in a vast world, foreign to everyone. Yet it is their very first game, Ico, that perhaps showcases how effective the blending of gameplay and story can be.
You play as Ico, and you guide the mysterious Yorda through this world. Yet every action of the world is fueled by holding hands. You must guide Yorda, she must help you. Everything centers around the actual act of interactivity. To be passive is to ignore what drives the very game forward.
8Nier Automata
The Nier series has many more entries and predecessors than Nier Automata, but there is no denying that is when the series, and Yoko Taro’s overseas popularity, reached its peak. And for good reason. With the talented combat designers from PlatinumGames with the story-writing expertise of Yoko Taro, Nier Automata makes a fascinating statement.
The combat is enticing, a system that yearns to be experimented with. It is gorgeously animated, like a graceful dance.Your enemies look rudimentary, lacking that same fluidity and beauty. Yet the game still begs the question: is looks all that defines humanity? Is beauty really what should make us human? Can you really justify destroying - killing - all these machines just because it’s fun? Because it’s what you were told to do?
It’s hard to articulate now the growth of Undertale, what with how integrated it is now into internet pop culture, and gaming as a whole. Like many indie games, it takes heavy cues from the likes of Earthbound, but Undertale is utterly surreal, deeply aware of its own existence in the world.
It is a satire upon everything, a commentary upon its own existence. How dare you speed through a dialogue bubble, why are you trying to kill people? Have a heart. The game will read your files, it will remember what you’ve done no matter how hard you attempt to wipe it. Undertale knows it’s a game, and tells its story through that very lens.
The vast majority of character-action games tend to let story fall to the wayside, in the traditional sense. Looking at Devil May Cry, its storytelling is not grandiose in the typical ways, though it is remarkable just how much it manages to tell in such a non-standard way.
Dante is boisterous, flamboyant. He moves fast, taunts enemies with glee. Nero is angry, every swing of his weapon done like he is unleashing some deep-seated anger. Meanwhile, Vergil is cool and calculating, ever the winner. Just standing still makes him more powerful, yet a single hit is a bruised ego, resetting his power. The personalities of the characters are screamed in the way they move, and it is character dynamics that push the story.
Hideo Kojima and his team have always been known for making somewhat esoteric games, riddled with deep-cut knowledge of world affairs and scientific terminology, to the point of absurdism. It is put to great effect in Metal Gear, though Death Stranding decides to take a more literal approach.
You must rebuild America, and that takes place one step at a time. Remove the pretense ofconvoluted storytellingand look at reality. This world is shared, your task is eased by the generosity of others. Humans, even in their isolation, seek interaction. And so you must interact. Even when you’re able to’t see them, people leave their items to you, pool together to fix the world. That is what it means to be human, to build a world to sustain that connection. You must act in unison, even if you can’t always see it directly.
Immersive sims have always toed the line between gameplay and narrative, each system informing the other. To make your world interactive, it must feel lived in, and that requires a firm understanding of its own world and story. Arkane are masters of this, and Prey remains the studio’s crowning achievement in this blend.
Despite Prey having the least humans you interact with, the way it blends these things feels the strongest. To use your special abilities, you must examine the Typhon. Yet the more you use these abilities, the more alien you become, to the point that turrets no longer see you as human. You stop cowering under tables and become an unstoppable monster yourself. But that is a choice, one that effects how other characters see you, and the ending you achieve.
Don’t Nod gained its initial fame with Life is Strange, though this is not where the studio began. That was with Remember Me, a character-action game, and it returned to those roots with Vampyr. While its combat was more informed by the likes of The Witcher 3, it began to tie in the choice-based design that had been previously used in Life is Strange.
In Vampyr, EXP is slow to acquire, with humans being the best source of it. The quality of blood increases as you gain a relationship with other humans, altering their own place in the world. Yet when the game proves too difficult, killing off those you’ve built such a camaraderie with may be your only choice. The game’s difficulty directly tempts you to feed on those who trust you most to make your own journey easier.
ensure to play the game on hard if you really want to feel the pressures of this system.
The term ‘Soulslike’ is a pretty diverse term now, typically centered around the core gameplay mechanics of Dark Souls, such as the stamina bar and consequences of death. What many of these games miss, however, is what actually makes games like Dark Souls work - tying the gameplay to the world itself.
How do you learn the weaknesses of an enemy in Dark Souls? You see the stats on their armour. How do you discover some of the more illusive endings? You pay attention and make connections in small pieces of dialogue. There are copious examples of this, of how the gameplay and narrative directly play into each other.
There are a great many aspects of the Xenoblade Chronicles series that get recognised, from the British voice-acting to the gargantuan worlds, yet it is rarely acknowledged, especially in the original Xenoblade Chronicles, just how well the story and gameplay are interwoven.
The affinity chart is one of the earliest features you are introduced to, every single NPC slapped into it like a collage. Then as you speak with them across the game, complete quests for them, they begin to form connections like a giant spider-web. This helps you remember the NPCs, but critically also showcases one of the game’s strongest narrative tools. To see those connections severed, or witness whole characters removed as a result of their death in the story. It adds a thematic weight that would be impossible otherwise.
