I don’t think that Ico or HL2 could be called interactive as far as story goes actually. Their story is simply not delivered through one dimensional cutscenes, nothing more.
Mmm… I guess that’s one reason I like PDO, you can choose between multiple routes and it takes you down different “cinematic” paths. It doesn’t really affect the story though, but I think kind of gameplay could be useful effectively for interactive storytelling.
As for KOTOR - I’m all for that dialogue choices etc but I think that more could be done with that kind of interaction. From what I’ve played of Mass Effect, it hasn’t really added that much to the formula. Imagine if you could have some control over things like body language, etc. The problem with Bioware’s games is that they try to cram quite a lot of side quests, dialogue scenes etc into the experience, which makes the conversations feel repetitive after a while. I’d prefer a shorter experience where I’m more involved with the characters, and every conversation felt unique (a bit like a movie, but with more outcomes).
Games like PDO don’t feel repetitive (very often) because they’re kept to the point.
Resident Evil 4
KOTOR
KOTOR 2
Tales of Symphonia (despite being insanely cliched)
Actually, Ico is, with only the exception of the fact that the ending remains unchanged, is entirely an interactive story. There are maybe 15 lines of dialog throughout the whole game, and yet there is much, much more to that story. How is it interactive? The player tells the story through their actions. The simple act of having to hold Yorda’s hand creates a bond between the two characters, and between the player and Yorda. Through that interaction, a desire to escape and help Yorda is born… I could go on and on. Half Life 2 is interactive in the sense that the player is never removed from the game world. Every choice is the player’s choice (within reason, of course - the game will restrict you to certain paths and whatnot) as the game never exits to a cutscene where the hero does something outside of the player’s control.
Solo - I agree in that it gets repetitive after a while, but that is simply the nature of the beast. The more variables you introduce, the amount of content that needs to be generated grows exponentially. I’d like to see someone build a game that had a true level of dialog interactivity restricted to 2 or 3 characters, rather than having to worry about cities full of random people. Even if just as an experiment. Maybe have a demo where you’re just a guy trying to work problems out with his girlfriend. And the outcome of the conversation, whether or not you get down to the heart of the issues you are having, or how much you actually discover about the relationship is completely dependent on not only your words, but your tone and, like you said, your body language.
Would be interesting for sure…
[quote=“Abadd”]
Actually, Ico is, with only the exception of the fact that the ending remains unchanged, is entirely an interactive story. There are maybe 15 lines of dialog throughout the whole game, and yet there is much, much more to that story. How is it interactive? The player tells the story through their actions. The simple act of having to hold Yorda’s hand creates a bond between the two characters, and between the player and Yorda. Through that interaction, a desire to escape and help Yorda is born…[/quote]
I’m a big Ico fan but, Ico didn’t invent emotional investment/involvement in videogaming. Your description could apply to a number of other games too. Games have made players care about characters before in a variety of ways.
(Personally the part which affected me the most was the scene right before the final boss where Ico was initially trapped and it wasn’t really because of Yorda.)
Ultimately Team Ico wants you to feel this or that throughout the game. They want you to care for Yorda. So in that sense it’s not interactive at all - you are playing a story with only one outcome while feeling you have to protect Yorda until the end which is what exactly what the the developers had in mind in the first place.
This is more of a question of meaning behind the word really. Story is “what happens”. The facts.
When you go see a great movie, you don’t like it just because of what happens in it. So many movies about revenge, about saving the girl etc You like it because of the experience. The way story is delivered. I guess my point is Ico’s story is very simple but the emotional experience is great.
A Legacy of Kain game on the other hand thrives on the complexity and arrangements (the history) of the facts, the events.
Story for me is medium-independent (whether it’s a book, movie or game the content is the same). Experience is not though.
Since you don’t change the facts within Ico I can’t agree it’s interactive in that sense. Nor is HL2.
Never said that Ico invented it. But, my point is that the game doesn’t make you care about Yorda simply by telling you about her via non-interactive cutscenes. The player’s emotions grow through the means of interaction. Other games certainly have done it. Dogmeant in the original Fallout is another one that comes to mind.
Yes, they want you to feel for Yorda. But they don’t do so by having a cutscene in which Ico professes his undying love for her followed by a slow motion scene of them running at each other. It’s done via interactive means - and the progression of that connection between Yorda and Ico, as perceived in the player’s mind, is completely interactive. That is distinctly different from every Japanese RPG out there, for example.
Yes, exactly. And to that same point, story is not defined by the outcome. It is the sum of its parts. So, even if the ending of the story is different, do you not in fact change the story in the way you progress through the story. In Ico, for example, the story is about the journey of the two main characters and their escape from the castle. The specifics of how they get past each obstacle are set, but the progression of their attachment towards each other is completely invented in the player’s mind. At no point in the game is it said that one cares about the other.
You don’t need to be able to change the outcome of a story for it to be interactive (sure it helps). However, both Ico and HL2 fundamentally change how the story is told.
Well that’s the ultimate trick always, getting the player to invent emotions in their own mind, could be said the same for any medium. I would agree with Gehn that it’s a stretch to call ICO’s story more interactive, just because it leaves room for player interpretation of the story, doesn’t change the fact that the entirety of the game progression is still as controlled as most games. The stimulus is the same, the game’s story is not interacting with the players choices in any unusual manner.
It’s partly perspective as well, it was still basically a boy saves princess story to me. Having to actually drag her through most of it didn’t change the basic dynamic, I imagine some players may care about how much Mario cares for Princess Peach, he’s willing to do a lot of jumping for her…
I did feel ICO had more dramatic power than most games, but c’mon… the cut scenes have to be given a lot of the credit there too. Without them I know the game would have seemed even more comical, and I would have been more puzzled why this kid doesn’t just leave her there… she’s pretty content trippin out most of the time. I remember whenever I had to call her, after a while I found myself saying “Needle!” a lot when she wouldn’t start moving right away…
[quote=“Team Andromeda”]
GOW (PS2) The only game to do ray harryhausen any sort of justice . A rip roaring game from start to finish with production vaules to die for , and some of the best bosses ever seen in a game[/quote]
Just out of curiousity, have you played the second game? God of War II pushes the PS2 not only harder than it’s ever been pushed, but as far as I’m concerned it pushes the system harder than any other game did for any other console of the entire previous generation. It’s a real marvel. Its gameplay is by no means a revolution, as it borrows much from the first game, but it polishes it all to a ridiculous sheen. The game has more flat-out “WOW” moments than any other action title I’ve ever played. I was constantly in awe of the scale of the game, and how clever various things were: even moreso than the first game!
I only really have two faults with it. One: I don’t like the second game’s storyline. I really enjoyed the presentation of the original title’s narrative, and I thought its revelations were really amazing. It wasn’t the best story ever, but it was engaging and surprisingly personal and clever at times. The second game didn’t really offer any of that for me. Its storyline had some decent twists, but overall it felt… “messy”, for lack of a better term. A lot of this probably has to do with GOW being a trilogy, so by the time God of War III hits the second game’s place as the “bridge” of the trilogy will probably allow me to forgive it a bit. The second problem: just like the first game, the actual play system doesn’t lend itself very well towards mastery in the same way that Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry do. On its Normal difficulty, I feel that they are pretty much perfectly paced and balanced. But on more advanced settings or during optional modes, I feel the actual combat system just doesn’t stand up to the demands they put on it. It’s very visceral, but it’s just not flexible. As such, it would be nice if the third game had non-combat focused optional content.
Other than that, the game is really impressive. Its entire intro level is also a very nice (and intended) homage to Shadow of the Colossus! 
By the way, I’ve just started Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. Absolutely INCREDIBLE! Perfect pacing and it’s full of so many incredible little details! My perosnal favorite: being able to jump from ANY height, and as long as you can see the ground below you’ll survive! 
I meant to reply to your last post Abadd but I kind of forgot to
Actually Heretic made a good at pointing the most important aspects to consider.
Dialogue is not the only way to show feelings between two characters. I mean, there is a reason everyone comes to the same conclusion regarding Ico’s and Yorda’s feelings for each other (well in a broad sense). Ico physically reaches out to Yorda to help her,
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he could have fled the castle by himself when Yorda fell while trying to escape for example.
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If it weren’t for the cutscenes like Heretic mentioned, how would we fill in the gaps? I mean, some people might even argue that Yorda was unresponsive and a bit of a hassle. Those people might not even particularly like Yorda but they know Ico does. How much impact would their interaction have on the story?
That’s not exactly my case (although you’d think she be more interested in escaping sometimes) but I there are concepts (again like Heretic mentioned) that are too powerful for our subconscious to ignore like “brave boy + defenseless girl”. She depends on you and, a game that makes you go through so much in order to aid her at all times with no apparent reason, can only mean your character cares about her.
You could say the same about Panzer Dragoon Saga (Azel and Edge) or even PDZwei (Lagi and Lundi) then. Every story ambiguity is left for your mind to wonder however it sees fit.
Even if you forget about the outcome there are no actual (lesser) facts you can change mid-game either. Yes, both games are cinematically different from the norm but immersion and interactiveness remain different concepts.
PS:play Fa?ade if you haven’t. I wouldn’t consider it awesomely fun but it is innovative.
Yeah I played it , and yes it really does push the PS2 , though I think Shadow of the Colossus pushed the PS2 more than any game . I also think that while GOW II is brilliant , its not half as good as the 1st
And yes Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is brilliant , you wait untill the last bit of the game (after the Bounty Hunting parts) You’ve seen nothing yet , its like Shenmue in terms of scale
[quote=“Team Andromeda”]
And yes Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is brilliant , you wait untill the last bit of the game (after the Bounty Hunting parts) You’ve seen nothing yet , its like Shenmue in terms of scale[/quote]
lol You’re getting me all pumped! It was actually your similar comments earlier in the thread that convinced me to play it! I had purchased it a while back, and was interested in it, but had so many other games on tap that it kind of fell to the wayside. Your comments of it being like “two games in one” and comparisons to Shenmue gave me the push I needed to finally put it in! So, thanks!
My apologies for the double-post, but I just wanted to mention that I completed Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath a couple of days ago. It was one hell of a game! I’m not sure I’d rank it up among the top tier of the previous generation, but I thought it was very original and compelling. I can’t say it’s really like anything else I’ve played, and it’s definitely true that the game is like “two in one”. The story was shockingly powerful, and the way it completely reverses itself at the midway point was highly impressive. What’s more impressive is the fact that the pacing of that incredible twist was spot-on. The game was just starting to get pretty repetitive, and then all of a sudden, BAM! My entire perception on things was turned upside-down.
I have a few issues with it. Namely the fact that there wasn’t really any optional content. All of the stuff from the first half of the game ends up not meaning much, gameplay-wise, and there’s no post-game extras to speak of. The voices got on my nerves a bit as well. Oddworld games are known for having certain species sharing the same voice, but for some reason it bothered me more in this installment than in others. Maybe it’s because the voices of the Clakkerz and Outlaws just weren’t as memorable as the creatures that Abe encountered.
Either way, my complaints with the game are quite minimal. It’s the best thing to happen to Oddworld since Abe’s original “Oddysee”. On a scale from 1 to 10, I’d say it earns an 8/10 from me!