Developers who relegate their narrative to cutscenes and linear dialogue are severely limiting themselves in how they tell their stories, and are likely alienating players.
That's according to Kelsey Beachum, best known for her narrative work on Mobius Digital's seminal 2019 title Outer Wilds but who has also written for Dying Light 2, The Outer Worlds and Groundless, among others, while delivering the keynote address at Devcom in Cologne today.
His first example was the classic Super Mario Bros, where the story boils down to Toad telling Mario that the princess is in another castle. Illustrating this as a timeline, he marked these moments in red because they completely stop the game – the player is no longer involved.
And, according to Beachum, this is still the case in many modern titles. He pointed to the cinematics found in Kingdom Hearts, Uncharted, and most AAA blockbusters or “anything that's designed to look like a movie.” Even Nintendo still does this, with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom pausing the game to show the memory cinematics that Link unlocks.
Behind-the-scenes footage is often referred to as “story wrappers,” but Beachum called on studios to stop using that terminology.
“The term 'story wrapper' implies that the story can be thrown away,” he explained. “Wrappers are trash, trash goes in the trash. Please stop calling my work trash.”
“While I joke a lot, this is a very flippant attitude toward narrative, one that downplays the importance of story. This is a problem because we end up thinking things like, 'Well, our game doesn't actually have much of a story,' or 'We can add story later.' But story and narrative go a long way in a video game, regardless of how big the story is.”
Beachum told attendees that story can help define the structure of your game, as well as develop relationships between player and characters, and provide much-needed context and motivation that drives them to keep playing.
While he acknowledged that cinematics are still useful tools, he stressed that they are one of many. Developers should also use dialogue between characters, voiceovers, interactive and explorable objectives, environmental narration, art, music, sound effects and virtually any element of game design to tell the story.
Beachum gave the example of visual effects, such as a plume of smoke on the horizon that tempts the player to explore. Objectives can provide context and frame the player's goals and actions. Level design can provide space for conversations that would otherwise be crammed into cutscenes, such as when characters converse while riding in an elevator.
Even the user interface can present the story in a more digestible and engaging way; Beachum pointed to the Outer Wilds screen that records discoveries and the connections between them. “If players had to take notes, it would be a terrible experience,” he said.
The point Beachum was trying to make was that, despite all the narrative tools available (and the many he didn't list), some games still rely solely on cutscenes and linear dialogue to tell the story.
“This is absolutely crazy. Why are we limiting ourselves? We don't have to. And the reason it's so limiting is because the rest of our department – gameplay and everyone else – aren't helping to tell the story. And we desperately need those guys to help share the heavy lifting. None of the stuff I just showed works without you guys. That's why it's so important for us to connect with everyone else in every department, because when that's not happening, we have to convey things in a much less interesting way, and that sucks. We want this to be the best experience possible.
“Keep asking yourself what is the best way to convey each piece of information”
“If you imagine this problem in another medium, like film… if I asked you to make a movie right now, but you can't zoom in and out, there are no tracking shots, no dolly shots, no moving shots at all, just still frames, and let's make it black and white. can “You can make a story like that, sure, but it's not going to be as good as it could have been if you'd had the full range of tools available to you.”
She said this is a key reason why writers and the narrative design department need to work with all the other teams during the development of any video game.
“I know we're all like weird little pixies, isolated and hunched over our little typewriters, but we really want to connect. It's really rewarding to be able to work with everyone on the games because if we didn't want that, we'd all be writing novels or something on our own.”
Beachum added that working with a limited number of ways to convey everything players need to know, cramming it into small sections between plays, can result in information dumps, which she described as “the worst possible outcome for this.”
He cited the classic example of Kaepora Gaebora, the owl from Zelda: Ocarina of Time who first appears after you emerge into Hyrule Field and interrupts before you can begin exploring. In this inevitable monologue, the owl halts the player’s adventure by introducing itself, repeating information about where you are in the story, reiterating your gameplay objectives, telling you what’s going to happen (e.g., you’re going to meet the princess), and even telling you how to use the map.
“I hate that owl so much, it represents everything I hate,” Beachum said. “I don't care about the secondary map screen right now, I want to run around Hyrule Field and hit things with my sword.
“Info dumps are really inefficient ways of communicating things to the player, even though they're things we absolutely need to communicate. They tend to create a worse experience for the player because everyone remembers a time when they were playing a game and just pressed the A button, thinking 'Oh my god, when does it end? ' They suck because they take control away from the player – suddenly we're not playing a game anymore, we're just beating it.”
Beachum concluded by offering a number of solutions, including planning for fewer cutscenes and shorter dialogue. He also recommended that story moments align with major gameplay moments – a previous example he gave was Resident Evil 4’s knife fight against Krauser, presenting a crucial conversation in a more memorable way that makes players watch a cutscene.
“Keep asking yourself what is the best way to convey each piece of information,” he concluded.
“Avoid the trap of thinking you can create a great story if you're not going to back it up with gameplay elements. There will be writers who say they can do it (I was one of them), but bless them, they can't. It just doesn't work that way. We need buy-in from the team.
“The less separated your story is from the rest of the game, the better the story and the overall game will be.”
GamesIndustry.biz is a media partner of Devcom. Travel and accommodation were provided by the organizers.