nicethugbert wrote...
Who says that there has to be a central plot in order for it to be a good story? Who says the plot has been revealed? If the plot has not been revealed then how can you say it is not central?
I don't understand this. Could you please clarify what you are trying to say. The plot does have to be revealed for it to be a good story, unless you are going for some kind of arthouse film/game where the point is to "contemplate the Universe" or something like that such in Kubrick's 2001, which I'm pretty sure was not the developer's intent. They clearly wanted to tell a story about some dude (or dudette) named Hawke.
I'm going to make an assumption and say that you're referring to DA2 basically being three stories instead of a single one (namely Deep Roads, Qunari, and Mage vs. Templar). Please correct me if I'm wrong in making that assumption. I'm also not going to argue that this style can't be done and done well. Pulp Fiction is a very good example of this working very effectively. The problem is that it was not done very well in this story. It's not BioWare's fault, this is just a very challenging way to tell a story and takes a lot more effort than the normal 3 act structure. I still scratch my head as to why BioWare though this could be done on such a short development cycle.
If they wanted to switch protagonists and have a different protagonist for each story that MAY have worked. The above mentioned Pulp Fiction did that. The Animatrix and Heavy Metal are other examples of that. If you want to keep a central protagonist then you really have to narrow the focus of your story. The point of a protagonist is to give the audience a point of view that we see through someoene's eyes. If we have huge gaps in time it takes the audience out of the story as the protagonist is doing things that the audience is not privy to. Again, this is STILL not an insurmountable obsticle in storytelling. Citizen Kane had huge gaps in the story. It was also a story being told as a narritive after the fact. The Godfather, while not a narritive, also had these huge gaps in time. These are considered two of the best movies ever made and they told a story in a similar style as DA2.
The main problem though is that a video game is basically an action flick. You have several action sequences throughout the game and players are expecting action beats at regular intervals. The pacing of the story completly conflicts with the pacing of the rest of the game. That is a huge problem right there. If this was a pixle hunting Adventure game such as the old Sierra games, then this would have worked fine. However you now have supercharged combat with the intention building excitement which is completly diffused with huge leaps in the story which basically hist the reset button on any attempts to build suspence or tension. It's a pacing nightmare.
Now, the best movie example I can think of that is closest to what BioWare is going for is The Princess Bride. In this story we don`t have any significant jumps in time for the protagonists`s story after the introduction in the first act. We also have a single story, with an action movie format (ie. action beats at predictable intervals). We also have the framed narritive. However when we leave the story to see what the narrators are doing we are dropped back into where we left off with the protagonist. We don`t completly take us out of the story twice, once to switch to the narrator and then again to jump further ahead in time in our protagonists story. Switching to the narrator then back to the story in progress can be a great way to either build tension or add some levity to the situation (like Verric`s tall tale about storming Bianca`s home). If it is breaking all of the already established tension and story flow then you`re doing it wrong.
Dragon Age is the story of an age. Like history, it takes place in many locations with a variety of people. The plot is huge to, put it mildly. Everthing is connected, no matter how unrelated it may seem. You simply need eyes large enought to see the big picture and sharp enough to see the details.
Ok, you're confusing setting with story and plot. The setting is where the story is taking place. The story is what is happening within the setting that the audience is supposed to care about. The plot is a single complication that the protagonist must overcome. The setting is huge in scope. A plot and story needs to be focused. People watching a story need to care about stuff that is happening by identifying with characters and understand what is challenging those characters (ie, understand the plot). Seeing the big picture is not an entertaining story. It is a history class. There is a huge difference between a history channel documentary and a historical movie, namely that a historical movie shows you the world through the eyes of a protagonist. Actually I`ve noticed that a lot of documentaries are now using small cutscenes to take you through the story through the eyes of people who lived in the time.
Since this is a make believe world then yes, the setting needs to be understood by the player. In BioWare games (I'm thinking primarily KotOR, and Mass Effect 1 and 2 and DA:O) exposition on the setting has primarily been the responsability of your companions. A cutscene will give you the bare minimum amount of exposition for the task at hand for the scene and talking to your companions can give you a significant amount of additional information if you so desire (or not if you don`t really care).
Take the mage tower mission from DA:O. You walk in, and the bare amount of exposition is given by Knight Commander Gregor. The mages are turning into monsters and they`re waiting for permission and reinforcements to purge the tower. This affects the protagonist because he needs an army to beat he archdemon, not because the story is ABOUT the plight of the mages. So this detail about the world was introduced but it was introduced in a way relevent to the protagonist, where that specific detail of the world was preventing him from completing his goals.
What you want is a simpler, smaller story, that fits a tea cup as well as a galaxy because what does not fit in the tea cup is simply more window dressing.
Actually that's called story focus. People are usually taken through a world through the eyes of someone, called a protagonist. A story will make people care about it`s protagonist and that will make people care about the story being told (which are basically the events happening around the protagonist). Without that, you can still HAVE a story (ie, events can still happen), it`s just it will be a story that people will have a hard time feeling attached to since they don`t know why they should care about it. The story needs to be focused to give context to the events that are happening within the world it is happening in.
Modifié par Hatchetman77, 09 juillet 2011 - 08:17 .
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