Tag Archives: story

Blizzard lore-master, Chris Metzen, has told VG247 that while less is more when it comes to creating a story for games, the instinct to clobber people with amazing stories is rather strong, which was one of the lessons Blizzard learned with Warcraft III.

Because of that, changes were implemented in StarCraft II – giving the way it all plays out a more retro feel instead of drowning the player with story.

“Story [in games] can get a bit complicated. You don’t wanna clobber people, but you want the right amount and to include some immersion where it feels like there is something going on when you are playing,” Metzeno told VG247. “But at the same time, you don’t wanna drown people, which is one of the lessons we learned with Warcraft III.

“While I am very proud of the game, take five steps back and you see that it was cool, but a little dense. You are playing through these missions linearly and there’s all sorts of story playing out. It was almost too much, to the point where the really cool moments didn’t stand out because there was just so much to take in because I threw everything I could throw at it at the end of the day.

“This time around, I think, that’s why we went with story mode the way we did with StarCraft II. We wanted to see if there was way to kind of go retro with the core gameplay and just make it about the cleverness of the map and not necessarily with giant betrayals or drama playing out in your actual gameplay. To really find a way to take all those thematic and character components and construct a space where they can play out and you can choose to charge that or not.”

There’s more past the break, and the full thing can be listened to via our latest podcast.
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Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux thinks games will surpass the level of storytelling seen in the Godfather. Bold claims. Not bold enough. He’s told VG247 that games will tell the best story in the world. Ever.

“The greatest story ever told? I think it’s going to be in a computer game,” he said.

“And I think that if I play the greatest story ever told in the same game as you play it, your greatest story is going to be different to my greatest story.

“And that is power.”

Not only will games tell the best story in the world, but if Molyneux has his way it’ll be his team that creates it.

He added: “That ambition to do that, to write that story, or to write that game that allows you to experience that story, is definitely something Lionhead Studios wants to do.”

The best story ever. Hopefully it involves chocolate cake and getting up later than 5.00am.

EA’s put out a new trailer for Mirror’s Edge, detailing what runners are and what they do.

The first-person action game’s out this month. After the break.

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Ken Levine’s not a man to mince words. So when he tells you that successful games need ridiculous stories, his 2 million BioShock sales mean developers should probably listen.

“If you want people to follow your plot, it has to be really fucking stupid,” he said in a PC Zone interview, adding probably the only vaguely intelligent comment on plotting in games we’ve seen in the past year in that developers “have the opportunity not to push information at people but to let them pull it to them.”

We love you Ken. And we love your beard.

Update: Oh. Levine didn’t say that in a PC Zone interview, we’re reliably informed. He said it at GDC. Way to go, CVG.

Update 2: It actually says on the CVG piece “in the latest issue of PC Zone,” as the editor’s just pointed out, and not in a PC Zone interview. Glad we got that cleared up.