Video Games and the Art of Story-Telling

There has been hype for an indie game called OFF, a French adventure RPG made by Mortis Ghosts in 2008, translated to English in 2011. I finally got to play it a few days ago, and quickly found myself eager to discover more in the story. With very interesting characters and a surreal plot, the game certainly lives up to its fame. 

OFF

In OFF, you play as a character called The Batter, and you’re on a mission to purify the world. As the story goes on you learn more about the disturbing truth behind the “world” you’re in and the characters you meet on the way.

Then I realized how long it was since the last time I even played a video game. I have never been a gamer. I revisited video games so many years later not because I like to play them, but because of how their players react to the stories. I’ve come to know quite a few games through LPs, or Let’s Plays, recordings of people narrating while playing video games posted usually on YouTube. I watch them for the stories.

There are many ways to tell stories. In writing, you recreate the senses through only words. When drawing a comic, you give pictures and dialogues that suggest motion and emotions. And through film, you indulge your audience’s eyes and ears with fancy visuals and music. Video game is just another form of story-telling. It’s also a multi-media one with interactivity. Players immerse themselves in the plot as one of the characters, and they experience both pictures and sounds.

Good video games are complex works of art that go hand in hand with technology, which in recent years enabled large improvement in interactivity as well as aesthetics. There is so much design that goes into the characters, the environments, the controls and the story. Just as any other ways of story-telling, how the story unfolds is key. In video games, however, the other elements are also essential because the player is actively participating in the virtual world. They have to be hooked by the setting as they go on to continuously want to explore the rest of the game. On this aspect I truly admire the creativity that is put into developing this form of entertainment.