The very first video game, by most accounts, is Tennis for Two. It was made by a man named William Higinbotham, an American physicist who is also known for his contribution to making the first nuclear bomb. In 1958, he created Tennis for Two using an oscilloscope and an analog vacuum tube computer.
The first video game to land into consumers’ hands, however, was Pong which was released in 1972. It had a similar structure to Tennis for Two.
Both games started with simple lines and dots, without any story to tell, only pure and addicting entertainment you could play for hours. 50 years after Pong, there are now games with entire worlds within them (some of them are even larger than Earth), so it’s only appropriate for video game developers to create and tell the stories for those imaginary worlds for us to dive into.
I love story-driven games, especially ones that have an open world — God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and NieR:Automata just to name a few. I’ve written a lot about those games already, but for today, I’ll discuss the unique power of video games when it comes to storytelling.
Elements That Make Video Games Great for Storytelling
Smoother Story Progression
In books, introductions are often needed to establish the setting and characters in the story. In some cases, they start with lines like “Once upon a time…” or “One calm Sunday afternoon…” Movies don’t need these introductions since you can see what’s happening already.
As seen on Kickstarter, our brand new party game Gentle Jack is now available on Amazon. Check it out on Amazon →
Video games improve on that in some cases. The usual video game intro is just showing you a tutorial of some sort so you can learn the main controls, how to move, how to use different tools, and all that is usually done while on your first mission.
Video games like The Last of Us, Mafia 1, or Uncharted use time skips to keep the audience entertained by skipping the boring stuff. These games are linear, meaning you only play parts that are of importance and you can easily tell where and when a story chapter starts and stops.
But we also have non-linear games, which are more prevalent in open worlds. These have looser and smoother story progressions. Some examples include the GTA series, God of War, and Horizon Zero Dawn. With these games, you just have to open your game’s map, pick a mission, go to the mission’s area, and start the mission.
Non-linear games allow players to progress through the story at their own pace. You can go straight to the story quests or get indulged on side quests or just explore the world. It’s up to you to move the story forward, and you have a lot of freedom on what to play, and that’s what I mean by a smooth story progression.
It’s not always the best, but if this has been utilized well by the game developer, it has the potential to be a great tool for storytelling.
Hidden Details and Stories
You need to focus while playing a video game. You have to use your eyes, listen to your surroundings, and focus on your environment to solve puzzles and problems as if you’re solving them in real life.
While you still have to focus on every detail in books or movies to fully understand the stories, video games take it up a notch, especially with open-world games.
In games like The Last of Us or God of War, not all answers are spoon-fed to you. Most of the time, you can figure things out by observing the environment and looking for irregular things that might have something to do with the story.
You can find collectibles that can tell you stories. A good example of this is in The Last of Us where you can find newspapers, journals, pictures, and other media that you can collect and some of them tell us the game’s background stories and lore.
The best part here is that exploring these games and all this time spent collecting and hunting for hidden items are purely optional. You can still enjoy the game without doing all this. But for the curious player who wants to find out more, they’ll also enjoy the game more.
Your Decisions Might Change the Outcome of the Game’s Story and Ending
Many video games make you stick to one path that leads to one ending. Everything that happens in between is pre-determined. However, some games have multiple endings, which is exciting for a storytelling medium because if you don’t like how your ending turned out, you can probably step back with a save file, and perhaps do things differently.
A poor example (but an example nonetheless) is GTA V. Near the ending, you have to make a decision that’ll determine the ending that you’ll get. For a better example, there’s Detroit: Become Human, where you make around 250 decisions that can lead you to 60 different endings. Only around 40 endings are unique, but that’s still a lot. With 40 endings, you really can get different lessons and values, and every ending is achieved by decisions you make.
Other examples include Red Dead Redemption 2 which has an honor mechanic that changes depending on how many good or bad actions you do. Some NPC dialogues and behaviors change depending on your honor level.
Games with different endings or that give players the power to run the story is a feature that I don’t think you’ll find that easily in other mediums like books and movies. While it’s still not too common in video games, it makes the story much more immersive when a game does it.
Having different choices and endings are not the best thing if you want to present a specific story with a specific ending and message. However, as I said, it’s all about proper utilization.
Complicated Messages Can Be Easier To Understand in Games
Some games have some deep messages that are just easier to understand when you play the game and understand the situation of the character as if you are the main character in the game.
A game that does this well is NieR:Automata. It deals with a lot of philosophical themes that are hard to understand and easy to misinterpret. Plus, if it was done as a movie, it would be so boring to watch since it’s a bit repetitive.
In video games, being repetitive is not always bad since it will bring up a ton of questions that beg to be answered. In NieR:Automata, you’re forced to play the main story twice. The more you repeat, the more you’ll understand the story.
This also applies to other games especially those with a New Game Plus mode. This is essentially a game mode where you can play the game from the start with zero progress, except you can keep your inventory, weapons, and skills that you earned from your previous game. Playing a game again on this mode will feel amazing and probably make the difficulty a bit easier so you can focus more on exploration.
Different Perspectives
Admittedly, movies and books do this really well, too. You can watch or read why the enemy did what they did, or generally just look through the eyes of different characters.
In video games, you generally control the main character only. In The Last of Us, you have to play as Ellie (the main character) for 10-15 hours. Then you have to play another 10-15 hours as Abby (the enemy). And that’s the problem. The game made players empathize with what’s supposed to be the enemy so much that the story suffered greatly from it. You lose the objective and the actions to move the story forward, now that you have played through the eyes of two characters with different and contradicting goals.
Sorry if I spoiled The Last of Us Part 2 for those who didn’t play it yet, but I only recommended the game on my must-play PS4 games article for its complexity and gameplay. Just exclude the story from your expectations.
Still, when utilized correctly, letting the player view the story through different eyes can result in a masterpiece. Some games (that I know of) that did this well are The Last of Us (the original game) and NieR:Automata.
Video Games as a Storytelling Medium
Sure, the title states that video games are the best medium at storytelling. But every element that made video games a great storytelling medium can also make them terrible when not utilized correctly.
I know there are a lot more things to discuss about video games as a storytelling medium, so, if you have other points to mention that I haven’t talked about here, do let us know in the comments. Better yet, join our Discord server through this link and we can discuss similar things about gaming there.
From the makers of this site
Want to play a game right now?
We built a free digital drinking game with 110+ illustrated Omen cards. Draw one, do what it says, suffer the consequences. No download · No signup · Single device.
Play It Now →
