{"id":2854,"date":"2015-04-20T15:48:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T15:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=2854"},"modified":"2018-07-29T21:16:44","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T21:16:44","slug":"the-temptation-of-the-cutscene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=2854","title":{"rendered":"Interactive Story: The Temptation of the Cutscene"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trap:<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are a writer, you are not used to being ignored. In non-interactive mediums, good writing is often the end-all-be-all for audience investment. But gaming is an interactive medium, a “lean forward” experience as opposed to a “lean back” one. The gameplay and mechanics are just as important to tell in the story as, say, dialogue and character development. And so we must focus on the narrative, not the writing of the game. It is dangerously easy to view\u00a0the writing of a game as a separate entity from its other parts. Its tempting to fall back onto habit and simply write what you want to say. This leads to the tedious mantra of “action-cutscene-action-cutscene” that so many developers seem to follow. It is easy to tell\u00a0a story, but much harder to craft an immersive narrative around and within a world. Here are some of the pitfalls that I experienced writing for The Studio.<\/p>\n

The Wall of Text:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Wall-of-text\"<\/a>
No offense, WoW fans.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The old standby of quest giving NPCs. I used to write these when I was afraid of the environment in which the story was told. A lot of times, I would be brought on to projects that had, for the most part, already been designed. Instead of telling the story that I had in my head, I had to work around an already built setting. This is a fundamental part of game design, and as a writer, you just have to swallow your pride and abandon that awesome, amazing vision that you’ve already determined will make you a star. Holding on to a story that is impossible to work into the narrative of the world leads to things like blocks of text, where the NPCs drone on about your precious, precious lore, essentially boring the player out of the experience.<\/p>\n

The Expository Cutscene:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Clip<\/a>
Still from the hit movie Metal Gear Solid 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You wouldn’t write a movie script in the same way you would write a novel. Why would you write a game in the same way you would write a movie script? The expository cutscene is the refuge of the writer who is either lazy, doesn’t know any better, or is faced with the all to frequent time crunch.\u00a0Every time you use a cutscene, not only is a player forced out of your experience, but I’m pretty sure an angel loses its wings. The story of a game cannot be told through disconnected bits of gameplay strung together with these globs of raw exposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trap: If you are a writer, you are not used to being ignored. In non-interactive mediums, good writing is often the end-all-be-all for audience investment. But gaming is an interactive medium, a “lean forward” experience as opposed to a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":3039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[399],"class_list":["post-2854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interactive-story","tag-interactive-story","wpcat-124-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9615,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions\/9615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}