[SF-Junky]

I'm not sure whether this topic is best suited for mission and campaigns or FRED discussions. The question I'm currently asking myself is what is the best way to tell a good story in FS2, respectively how you tell your story in a good way.

Many people will agree that Blue Planet told a good story in a very good way. As far as I see it right, many people liked about it that it was a "character-driven campaign". The main character Samuel Bei was indeed worked out very well. This worked pretty good, because it was only one person the author put its focus on. Via personal log entries, for example, you can have the player have a very good view of your character's feelings etc., and dreams can be made quite easy - Derelict also had one dream mission.

Interaction between characters, however, is a bit more difficult. This can only work ingame, but there it doesn't always fit. Pilots who are involved in a firefight with enemy fighters, bombers and warships will likely not talk about the current political situation or their latest poker match or whatever they do in their free time.

FreeSpace, however, is not very appropriate for telling dialogues "outgame". Basically, I think that this is not too bad, because I think the player should actually play the story and not just watch it in briefings, cutscenes and so on. Yet still, I've come to a point in my campaigns where it doesn't work without Freelancer-like cutscenes.

What do you think about this? Are cutscenes in which people just talk for two to three minutes a good way to develop a campaign's plot and its characters, or would they be too film-ish?

[General Battuta]

War in Heaven uses some in-mission dialogue choices, where the player gets to decide what to say. This makes those long cutscene sequences a lot more fun.

I believe Wing Commander Saga used a similar approach.

Another major technique we use is communiques between characters in the format of text messages in the CB stage, or even character interaction during briefings - a technique pioneered by Beyond the Red Line, where the briefing officer would deliver the briefing as usual but other characters would interject in the audio.

The fiction viewer can allow you to present (hopefully concise) scraps of narrative in the form of stories or log entries. We're using that too for WiH.

The most important element is in-mission dialogue. Use a technique called 'inclueing', where characters convey information without directly referencing it.

For example, a character who might normally say "More enemy fighters jumping in" could say "We've got more targets!" to express confidence (whether situational or personal), or, alternatively "Oh, hell, more of them" to convey pessimism or fear. You can get across a lot of information about characters this way.

Keep it concise. Focus on saying as much as you can with as few words as possible.

Let's say you want your pilots to talk about the current political situation. Well, find a clever way to do it: have the wing or squadron leader give an order like "Maintain brevity. Save the [relevant political issue] chatter for the mess. We've got a job to do here."

[The E]

What do you think about this? Are cutscenes in which people just talk for two to three minutes a good way to develop a campaign's plot and its characters, or would they be too film-ish?

Yes, actually. Given the tools we have now for storytelling in FS (which also include the fiction viewer), using non-interactive cutscenes definitely is a good way to tell a story.

The caveat, however, is that you can't just jump right into this; I think you need to use more traditional forms of character- (and, if necessary, world-) building to get the players interested.
That's the crucial point, really. All the best dialogue in the world will just pass by the audience with a great big collective meh when they don't care about the characters; If you can get them interested enough so that rather than blowing **** up all the time, they actually want to hear the interactions (or read them, as the case may be), then you've got free reign.

Hmm.

Now, you mentioned the difficulty of portraying outgame interaction. True, that's the most difficult thing to convey. The fiction viewer helps (A LOT), just because we've been conditioned by years and years of campaigns to expect Briefings to be, well, briefings. Military briefings, delivered by a CO of some sort, where you're just part of the audience. I think Spoon did a few dialogue scenes in his briefings, which worked quite well for me, but again, this is something that may take people by surprise and even put them off a little. Not to mention that it's really hard to fit long text into those little briefing windows comfortably, since it'S very, very easy for dialogue to get lost when the player doesn't notice the little "more" telltale onm the bottom of the textfield.

[SF-Junky]

Thanks for those tips. That may help me a lot. Interesting you both mention the fiction viewer, a tool I detected two hours ago. That's coincidence, I guess.

Now, you mentioned the difficulty of portraying outgame interaction. True, that's the most difficult thing to convey. The fiction viewer helps (A LOT), just because we've been conditioned by years and years of campaigns to expect Briefings to be, well, briefings. Military briefings, delivered by a CO of some sort, where you're just part of the audience. I think Spoon did a few dialogue scenes in his briefings, which worked quite well for me, but again, this is something that may take people by surprise and even put them off a little.

Are those missions still somewhere around to get?

[The E]

Yeah, unless he took down his Wings of Dawn demo. (At least, I _think_ it was in those.... )

[Spoon]

Wait, that was a demo? I was sure it was intended for testplaying and bug testing 
But yes, I used quite a bit of dialogue in CB, briefing and debriefing. Which as The E already pointed out might not sit well with everyone (But that's their loss ). I actually came up with the idea to do it this way after playing JAD, believe it or not.

Character name a: "I'm hungry"
Character name b: "Hmmm donuts"

Kinda like that
Anyway I'm not a writer so you might want to disregard everything I say on this subject

[Thaeris]

I get the impression that FS has very useful tools for evolving a story and the universe it's set in.

...In which, I think a "loose" approach is quite good for the tools available. Give the character a name and gender, fine. However, I think the dynamics of the character should be reflected by the FREDed nuances of the support cast - this will make for tougher mission design, though. What this allows the player to do is still "feel" what he/she might want the character they're playing as to feel, while not specifically being told what to feel.

Adding in player character dialogue doesn't hurt as long as it doesn't overpower what the player might naturally feel.

If you can balance those two aspects in a campaign, you can really bring a story to life. I think Transcend followed this pattern to a substantial degree at least in terms of the latter point. You felt like Sunder Marcel - you became that character. I think that Ransom did a better job with making you feel like the character in Transcend than Darius did with Samuel Bei in BP:AoA, in all honesty, for the mere reason that Ransom did not impose any feelings upon the player. The player was instead invited to explore their own feelings in relation to the events presented. If you must have a character-driven story, I think abstracting Transcend's methodology is a superb route.

Applying the former point - campaign dynamics - is the masterful element which is truly difficult and elusive. That has the capacity to literally make the campaign different every time, which is something fun to think about but a real dragon to dual with. Dynamic characters are a step beyond that...  

Empty, long, or mundane missions are superb opportunities for character development. A snippet of that three-hour patrol. Derelict's nav-beacon placements within the asteroid field. Flying the landing pattern about the destroyer... Action isn't everything. Going through training, boring (and even uneventful) escort missions, and the like give a sense of being within the world, and because your wingmates will be just as bored as you, there is the time to develop the personal side of the story. This is something BP does exceptionally well.

Those are my thoughts on the matter.

[General Battuta]

If you want to present a character that the player is supposed to believe they are, you can do that, but I think that's a crutch games need to move away from.

Real literature has built some of its best stories around people who most definitely aren't us. What's important is that you can understand the character; you don't need to be them.

[Nuclear1]

But it certainly does help to have at least one of the main characters being similar to the player.  I'm not going to find the same connection with an Admiral that I am with a fighter pilot.

The two examples we've seen so far with storytelling and character development--Transcend and BP--certainly did the job.  I personally prefer Transcend and Sunder Marcel.  Nothing against Darius of course; there was just such a more epic sense of danger prevalent with random ships disappearing and all different manners of supernatural events going on.  Not to say I didn't feel a connection to Bei.

[Mongoose]

If you want to present a character that the player is supposed to believe they are, you can do that, but I think that's a crutch games need to move away from.

Real literature has built some of its best stories around people who most definitely aren't us. What's important is that you can understand the character; you don't need to be them.

See, I don't see that aspect being nearly so much of a "crutch" as it is a feature that games can potentially leverage to their advantage.  With the exception of those cheesy old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, the novel format is fundamentally limited to peering into a world through another person's (or many people's) eyes.  The reader's view is constrained to what's written on the page, and likewise, their reactions are founded on the reactions of the characters in the story.  In contrast, the medium of games allows you to be the one present in the story, and your own reactions to events gain primacy.  That's a trope that I've always personally enjoyed seeing executed properly.  I love how Gordon Freeman maintains his mute first-person perspective throughout the entire Half-Life saga, and I love how the Myst series never even assigns its protagonist "Stranger" (i.e., the player-character) a set gender.  Games like this have always given me the sense of throwing myself full-force into some wonderful alternate universe, without any emotional abstraction whatsoever.

Now none of this is in any way a slight against Blue Planet.  I greatly enjoyed playing through it, and I identified with what Samuel felt and experienced over the course of the story.  There's plenty of room in FreeSpace modding, and in games in general, for multiple forms of storytelling.  However, I don't see the newer as superseding the older, as I still love suiting up as the nameless Alpha One and letting my own thoughts and reactions define my own story's "canon."

[General Battuta]

I agree in many respects, and I'd never insist on one approach over another; they're both interesting.

I think it can be an interesting approach, but that when you try to tell a more detailed, layered story it can become incredibly contrived.

Half-Life is a perfect example. It worked very well in Half-Life 1, slightly less well in Half-Life 2 where it became awkwardly obvious ("don't say much, do you?") and less and less well in the episodes as Gordon's total lack of response to anything started to feel just absurd.

By the end of Episode 2 it was really starting to bug me.

So in short I often feel that having the nameless, empty protagonist creates a massive void at the center of the story that you need to work around.

[Mongoose]

I've honestly never played the original Half-Life myself, but I didn't have any problems with the conceit while playing through Half-Life 2 or its episodes.  (I played them all back-to-back, so maybe that affects things.)  I didn't take that line by Alyx as "awkward" at all, but instead as a fun little bit of tongue-in-cheek fourth-wall breaking.  Like I said above, I'm of the opinion that this sort of setup in a game allows the player to directly project their own emotions onto the in-game universe.  Gordon didn't need to provide a response, because I was the one doing the responding for him; the emotions expressed on my own face were those he himself was expressing in-universe.  At least how I see it, short of full-fledged virtual reality, it's the closest one can come to stepping into someone else's shoes.

(And hell, as far as we know, Gordon could be legitimately physically mute. )

I'd also disagree somewhat that having a nameless protagonist necessitates leaving a "void" in the middle of a story and hampering how it's delivered.  I think much of that is a function of what sort of story is being told.  Obviously, a story tightly focused on its named protagonist becomes difficult to plow through if said protagonist is extremely milquetoast, but if the story is instead focused on the external interactions or other characters, or even more on the progression of plot than characters of any sort, then the identity of the protagonist becomes less and less influential.  I'd take Half-Life as somewhat of a mix of those two alternate approaches, whereas FreeSpace was almost purely the latter: the game was driven by raw plot, so character interactions weren't really needed.  As in everything, it all comes down to personal preference, but I don't see any reason why one can't manage to tell a good, detailed story while simultaneously shifting focus away from the player's alter-ego.

[starwolf1991]

Very good tips and discussions here. I approve 

This is something I've always tried to aim for whenever I've been developing Cerberus. Having characters that interact with one another and develop as the story progresses. I've even looked at going one step further by having some parts of the story shown from a different character's prespective.

 Can't say I've been that succesful, but well, no everyone is. These tips and thingos here would really help out a lot, I think.

[Thaeris]

If you want to present a character that the player is supposed to believe they are, you can do that, but I think that's a crutch games need to move away from.

Real literature has built some of its best stories around people who most definitely aren't us. What's important is that you can understand the character; you don't need to be them.

I think this is valid as any point in a story - arguing over which point is better is pointless as it's up to the storywriter to make it happen. However, what I will say is a crutch to the approach here is that although it may make the story more structured, the problem is still that the player is still the player, if you will. Thus, imposing a nature/persona upon the player is potentially a big problem as although you might understand or empathize with the character, you don't necessarily want to be in their shoes. You run a great risk of making the campaign unenjoyable for reasons like this. In a sim/RPG/FPS - type environment, such impositions can be a tremendous turn-off as, well, you're playing as that person - and there's nothing you can do about it.

However, I think this approach works very well in other games where a grander scale of what the player does matters more so than just as a pilot/soldier. 3rd person games like RTS can benefit marvelously from novel-like storytelling. I think if you abstract games like StarCraft, this is very apparent. RPGs are variable in this regard - something like "Heavy Rain" (which I've only read about) in which the player plays a third-person role with many characters also benefits from "novelized" storytelling.

This is never to say that "novelized" storytelling in which the player only bears witness to the plight of the protagonist is a poor choice in something like FreeSpace, but it doesn't fit the nature of gameplay in that guise entirely. When I think about it, Transcend did have a great many "novel-like" elements within it, but it never stifled the player in terms of story/gameplay - it melded beautifully with letting you be Sunder while writing down his feelings visibly.

Finally, just as a reittereation, I think "novelized" gameplay is a good concept, but the execution is often difficult with a game like FS. It's up to the author to make something work. 

[NGTM-1R]

I'm going to do something radical here and say you don't need character interaction to create a good story.

This is a conclusion I drew from things like Panzer General, but most of all from Harpoon Classic. Harpoon is not a fancy storytelling medium. You're given briefings and not much else. There's no ingame dialogue at all, except for contact reports and the possiblity you'll get a nuclear release.  There are no real characters in the classic sense of the word; you might perhaps become attached to individual ships (lord knows I loved the scenarios centered around Miss Kitty, the USS Kittyhawk), but they don't speak, and they don't really behave any differently from others of their class. They might just be posistioned well or very lucky, or it could be no reason at all. The original scenario pack for the Greenland-Iceland-UK theatre presented a linked series of stories with a briefing in "storytelling" format. (The other original scenario packs didn't really have interlocking stories.) So did a couple of author's scenario sets, like Cobalt Shiva. Cobalt Shiva in particular basically wrote a novel about a theoritical World War 3 and then let you fight it with his scenarios.

But then Set 4 and Set 5 came out. The briefings were minimalistic, styled after actual message traffic. The scenarios themselves presented clearly interlinked campaigns and a natural escalation of the war. It revolutionized the way people built Harpoon scenarios, as the all later campaign sets official released for Harpoon Classic were built in this style. In a medium where your only interaction is contact and damage reports, and where your only storytelling device is the scenario briefings, someone had discovered a way to tell a compelling story.

It was this style of storytelling I intended to emulate for Second Impression, before I abandoned FREDding due to my relative incompetence at the task. Abandon the personal perspective that people assume FS forces on them; with the fiction viewer and Command Briefings, present the broader story of the war via message traffic, personal communications between staff officers and admirals, and action reports. Rather than have the player assume the role of a single pilot, have them take multiple posistions, viewing and participating in the key events of the campaign from several perspectives.

In short, don't try to write a novel with what's ultimately an impersonalized medium. Instead, create a history.

[General Battuta]

I actually think that could be very interesting.

[CP5670]

In short, don't try to write a novel with what's ultimately an impersonalized medium. Instead, create a history.

You pretty much summed up my thoughts on this. The Freespace story is unique among game plots in the sense that it doesn't revolve around specific characters, but focuses more on the big picture and the important events in the game universe. If there is any focus on characters, it's because they are significant in the game universe (such as Bosch). I find that this approach make the story feel more believable and more like events in real life.

I like character-driven stories as much as anyone, but I would like to see more campaigns take this approach and "tell history" the way the main FS campaigns do. Multiple perspectives are a good idea here and would take this storytelling approach a step further than the main campaign.

Gordon didn't need to provide a response, because I was the one doing the responding for him; the emotions expressed on my own face were those he himself was expressing in-universe.  

So did you talk to your monitor when people asked Gordon questions?

[Mongoose]

...sometimes.