Moby Dick in an X-Box? (cont.)

The Godfather

The Godfather (EA Games, 2006) is a big-budget game based on one of the greatest film properties of all time. It illustrates what can occur when the game publishers have a great property to work from -- a classic of its original genre -- and 'sky’s the limit' on development.

The Godfather illustrates its brilliant development in this screenshot of game play action.

However, the dramatic elements that made the movie great are distinctly lacking from this otherwise highly immersive and compelling game. Principally what is missing is adherence to the dramatic rule that the main character must move the action. (See: Robert McKee’s textbook on the film scripting craft Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting (Regan Books, 1997). The player’s character doesn't ever face the moral crises that beset Michael Corleone, and those choices and crises are what made the movie great. In the game, the player’s character is not a Corleone; he is some kid from the streets whom The Family takes under its wing, and who, through a series of successful missions, eventually rises to become ‘Don of New York’. Although adherence to the canon of the film is strict, actual crisis for this character is lacking or contrived. The player’s character throughout is simply ‘a man on the make’-- no moral choice.

Despite great production values and a solid-gold license on the source content, this game is not destined to become a cultural classic. An opportunity lost?

Oblivion

Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks/2K Games, 2006) is a fantasy role-playing game based on the standard premise that Joseph Campbell termed ‘The Hero’s Journey’. In Oblivion, McKee's commandment 'that the protagonist shall move the action towards the crisis' is upheld; however, if the protagonist opts not the move towards the crisis just yet, the crisis will wait.

Roger Ebert addressed this issue directly: “There is a structural reason for [why video games don’t seem to have any classics yet]: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.”

Movies and novels move along at a pace determined by their crafters. The player's objectives and progress are essentially self-directed, through his choice of whom to assist, and whom to wreak vengeance on. Main plot in Oblivion can wait, will wait, but it is the job of the designers, and their minions the characters throughout the game, to nudge the player towards taking up the quest perilous and at some point stop being distracted with all the little ‘errands of advancement’ along the way. Thus, both the principles of player choice and of the call of destiny are upheld. 

The most forward-looking element of Oblivion is its use of nuanced -- and variable -- relationships. Not only are competing interests part of the game, but the attitude of the non-player characters can be influenced for good or ill by the player through a series of mini-conversations and, in some cases, cash bribes. Perhaps in a way, Oblivion’s designers are attempting something more challenging than envisioned for many films -- they attempt to draw the player in, to get him to take up the core challenge, rather than have the film’s director finally have to show him how it all comes out.  Maybe the player comes to care for these silly people whose world he is saving from destruction.

Oblivion's great graphics are complemented with unique relationship game play, but not enough to make a classic.

Yet none of these games fully rise to the challenge and potential of a dramatic interactive narrative fiction played out in a game.

Any game that seeks to draw the player in (invoking Aristotle’s catharsis), faces the large storytelling and development challenges associated with making the player feel something about the choices they make, about the emotional investment and identification they develop with the character and the storyline. Beyond deploying interactivity to invoke catharsis and identification, modern games typically enable non-linear plot and discovery choices not viable in films.

Although ambitious, innovative and to various degrees successful in their own right, Indigo Prophecy, The Godfather, and Oblivion each lacks some essential quality that would constitute a true classic for the medium. The talent and technique, and perhaps the audience, necessary to pull this off may not yet exist. But surely it will.

What we need are, as Robert McKee says, “Good stories, well told.”  Or, adapting slightly, what we hope for are “Good games, great stories, well played.”

We are only a few years away, I think, from the first truly classic character-driven dramatic game. Distinct from a film or a play, which are watched, or a book, which is read, a game is played. When a game is created with characters who struggle to a crisis in a new and powerful story, and these struggles are combined with the remarkable interactivity the industry is capable of designing: then a classic game will be born. But it's all in the playing. And we are not there yet.
 

Davis is a principal with Mythos Consulting and currently working on a story adaptation project. He holds two Master’s degrees, one in Library Science and the other in Medieval History, and focuses on the nexus of literary and educational theories.
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