2013: The Year of The Video Game Story

Once upon a time, there was a man and a girl...

There have been some remarkable achievements in video game storytelling in 2013.  While these stories have not rewritten the rule-book entirely – all have been built on the sturdy shoulders of what has gone before - it's rare to find so many diverse approaches to interactive narratives in a single year. It feels like the medium is shifting in focus; not only within the blockbuster space where nuance and ‘mature’ themes are quickly becoming expected, but in the independent space, where games like Gone Home and Papers, Please are teaching the big boys lessons in telling stories with restraint.
Here's a brief look at why 2013 has been a great year for video game storytelling so far.

(Broad spoilers ahead)

Bioshock Infinite kicked off the year with a bang.

Retroactive storytelling

For a change, we are looking at a year where there has not just been one mainstream game with a story we have poked at and dissected and argued over, but several. February’s BioShock Infinite was the first of these; a slickly produced fantasy thriller – or sci-fi shooter, or dystopian drama, whatever you like - that compelled players to spew out screeds of analysis into the web. What does it all mean? Is it a cautionary tale? A sly commentary on player agency? Or a Shyamalanic tongue-twister that thinks it’s smarter than it really is?
Players have argued that BioShock Infinite is all of these things. Whether or not you liked Infinite’s ballsy ending, I have yet to meet a person who wasn’t later compelled to pour over the twists and turns that had gone before it. That it’s still being discussed months later is testament to the complexity of director and writer Ken Levine’s narrative.

Men at the End of the World

Both BioShock Infinite and June’s The Last of Us re-tread mainstream video game themes of masculinity and violence, but shift away from the usual faceless protagonist driven only by the need to join a faceless fight towards more vulnerable, broken men, who commit violent acts only to protect those they care for – or rather, grow to care for. Interestingly, in both games a father/daughter dynamic has replaced the soldier jock/sexy nondescript female one we might have found in the past. (2012’s The Walking Dead also centred on the same dynamic.)
The Last of Us’ central relationship is wonderfully realized, principally because it feels plausible, and plausibility in video game worlds is rare indeed. Words go unspoken, reflected only in body language. Minor detail in the world is actually observed by the characters as if it exists. Jokes are casually made and sometimes ignored. Ellie and Joel react to one another with fear, love, and anger, their relationship played out cautiously over a generation gap.
While The Last of Us’ story won’t change the world – this isn’t the first video game story about a gruff man trying to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, after all – the relationship between Joel and Ellie feels real, crushingly and beautifully real, and writer Neil Druckmann takes it in a brave direction at the game’s end.  As critic Leigh Alexander asks – how does a gruff-man-at-the-end-of-the-world story get better?
I agree with her conclusion: it probably doesn’t.

Joel & Ellie's story will likely sit with you for days.

Mysanthropy at its Finest

On the other end of the spectrum to The Last of Us’ grimy realism is Grand Theft Auto V’s exaggerated satire. In the periods between each GTA game it is easy to forget that games can be this funny, this clever, and this referential; last month we were reminded of it as if Rockstar had slapped us in the face: don’t get complacent, bitches.
Indeed, no other game dares to stick its fingers into the open wounds that Rockstar's does. It delivers pulverizing satire, touching upon our most uncomfortable indulgences: our obsession with celebrity, our obsession with money, our apathy.
But GTA V’s greatest achievement is the way it effortlessly blends this parody into a game that is, ultimately, a ridiculous amount of fun. As Keza put it in IGN’s review, the problem commonly found in open world games is the tension between our own impromptu stories and those that the writers are trying to tell. Grand Theft Auto V accommodates both stories seamlessly; its well-written characters and biting dialogue complementing our personal brands of anarchy every step of the way.

Girls and their Ghosts

While I had major criticisms of the story in Quantic Dream's latest interactive drama Beyond: Two Souls, it would be disingenuous not to mention it, principally because a convergence of video game and cinema aesthetics is still a rarity. Like The Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain before it, Beyond: Two Souls strives to diversify the video game target audience through easily accessible interactive drama, and with the addition of top Hollywood talent it's even more likely to reach those that rarely play video games, or have never touched a video game before.
Whether you loved it (as some did) or hated it (as some did) or fell somewhere in the middle (as I did), Beyond: Two Souls is important, if only to be a strong example to naysayers, newcomers, and perhaps even a handful of ‘core’ gamers, that video games can be much more than pretty shooting galleries.

Storytelling in the Outskirts

While all these big-budget games have made strides towards the vaguely defined ‘maturity’ we seek in this medium, it’s predictably in the indie space, where developers are working without the pressure from publishers to generate millions of dollars from a broad audience, in which we’ve seen some of the more fascinating experiments with narratives this year.
The Fullbright Company's Gone Home, which I really can’t recommend enough if you haven’t played it already, has since become something of a new poster child for 2013's indie scene. Made by a small, four-man team, the limited resources Fullbright had to work with inspired the kind of eloquent narratives very few 10-20 hour gaming experiences made with quadruple the budgets have touched.
Like a Portal or a Shadow of the Colossus before it, Gone Home gives you very little as you begin exploring it: just a simple objective (look around) and a very basic skillset (move, interact). And while you have the freedom to do whatever you want within Gone Home’s perfectly detailed universe, very rarely do you ever feel at odds with the wants and desires of its protagonist. Fullbright has created a seamless intersection between our sense of control over the world and a gracefully told classical narrative, which, in an age of cut-scenes and convoluted, over-explained plotlines, is a rare achievement indeed.

There are a lot of stories in Gone Home's home.

Gaming with your Conscience

It's a reductive approach to gameplay we're seeing echoed elsewhere. In Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please, a simple mechanic – stamp a passport with a green stamp or a red one - opens up dozens of agonizing choices as you decide who you’re going to let across the border, and who you’re going to turn away, in a fictional communist country.
A stark, minimalist presentation leaves you to make these choices without distraction. When you crush the hope of some poor desperate soul, there are no violin strings, no glistening high-def tears, no motion-captured faces contorting in anguish. Generally there's only a sentence, but it will be a powerful one: "you've doomed me."
Both Gone Home and Papers, Please tell big stories in modest packages, stories that will, perhaps, stay with you much longer than those about angry men with angry guns.

The Narrative is the Game

A game that seeks to turn interactive narrative inside out caps off the year thus far. The Stanley Parable is a short, subversive piss-take on single-player video game tropes, as well as a fascinating experiment in a virtual choose-your-own-adventure novel. It's a story that pretends to be a game, an entirely narrative-driven adventure that is constantly pointing out that it's a narrative driven adventure.
As the truth behind 'protagonist' Stanley's situation slowly unravels, you'll find yourself pushing and prodding at the narrative. What will happen if you go through the left door instead of the right one, as instructed? What if you try and kill Stanley in this section, instead of entering the boss' office? Unlike many single-player games that try to usher the player subtlety along their rigid paths, The Stanley Parable dares you outright to stray.
To say any more would be too much of a spoiler. Play its story. Try and bend its story. See what happens.

Which door will Stanley go through?

As the medium has matured, an ongoing debate has been raging over whether games can tell meaningful stories, or if we should just accept them as trivial wrappers in which to contain the all-important gameplay. But with each passing year there are gems amongst the ridiculous bombast that remind us that they can, and in ways we might not have expected, as I hope I've illustrated with the above examples. 2013 has been a stand out year for video game stories. There is exciting exploratory stuff going on here. Let's hope it continues.