Praise the Dialogue!!!

Why Dialogue Matters?

Hi everyone!! Welcome to blog post #3!! I’m going to kick things off by saying that for me personally, video games have been one of the best possibly ways to escape from reality, and to submerge one’s self into a world with endless possibilities. Some people may wonder, what makes video games so popular in today’s culture? And as a response, many gamers, who have spent countless hours playing on their PCs or consoles, will say or give a number of reasons, such as the 3D graphics or the very complex storyline (which I completely agree), but for this blog post, I’ll be focusing on why and how the dialogue is just as important in video games. 

Explains “What the Hell Is Happening?!?!” 

Dialogue complements the storyline in a way that makes a player understand the situation that’s currently unfolding, and where the player must go next. To better understand, let’s use the intro from the game Skyrim, as an example. 

After watching the video, you probably get the idea that the dialogue is the main ingredient to the story. It’s also important to realize that the game developers aren’t going to give you a tiny book that provides an explanation of everything that will happen in the game because it will take away the overall playing-experience. So, as a way to subtly provide the information, the game developers intertwined the game’s story-line into the conversations of NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) that play an important role further in the game’s progression.  

 In the video above, the player’s main character (the protagonist that we can play as in first-person or third-person ) is surrounded by different conversations that were held by the different characters, and this was suppose to help provide the setting of where the story-line takes place in this virtual world. We understand that the protagonist was trying to get across “the border”, but was arrested because of possibly being mistaken has part of an enemy group called The Stormcloaks by another group of soldiers called the Imperials. 

Imperial vs. Stormcloak (tamrielvault.com)

And that the protagonist and the three other prisoners riding in the same cart, are most likely being taking somewhere that will be there place of execution. Without the conversation, it would be very unclear to many players as to why the protagonist is riding in the wagon, and helps explain the type of predicament that he/she is currently in at the moment. It’s important for the player to be included in this type of knowledge because it makes them feel more part of the story and journey that’s about to unfold, which is the whole purpose of an RPG.  

Filling In the Blanks

The dialogue can give a player ‘a heads-up’ about what they might expect later on in the game. In the video, we also hear that there’s some type of rebellion that’s currently taking place between the Stormcloaks and Imperials, and this seems to act as the time-frame for the game. Thanks to this bit of info, players can speculate that they will most likely become involved in this fight between these two opposing sides as they further progress in the game. In a book written by Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good For You, he says that the gaming culture centralizes on learning as you play, and the conversations between characters does exactly that-learning the context of the story.[1]

Where Do I Go?!? What Am I Suppose To Do!?!

Unfortunately, the video cuts off a bit early but once the dragon appears, the protagonist (you) gets up and is told to quickly get up and run to a nearby tower for cover by one of the NPCs. Once inside, the NPC tells you to loot a dead body for a weapon and armor, so that you may protect yourself in the future as you escape from the burning village (caused by the dragon). 

Once again, we can see Johnson’s statement about ‘learning as you play’, but there’s another element that appears, which can be seen in a large variety of games today, and its job is to help the player move forward. At the Game Developers Conference 2014 (GDC), Sheri Graner Ray (founder and CEO of Zombie Cat Studios) and Jennifer Hepler (former writer of Dragon Age) talked here about the video game dialogue in a seminar titled “Engineering Better Dialogues”. And during the event, Ray stated, “Conversations are there to move the player forward in the game…..Conversations are a hallmark of story-driven game and adventure games. They are there to keep the player involved, to keep the story moving."[2]

 

Now you could randomly explore and discover things that you can or can’t do, but to some extent it can become quite boring and frustrating, so game developers and writers lend a helping hand through the dialogue to nudge players in the right direction.

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[1] Johnson, S. (2005). Television. In Everything bad is good for you: How today's popular culture is actually making us smarter (p. 92). New York: Riverhead Books.

[2] Farokhmanesh, M. (2014, March 17). Why in-game dialogue and character conversations matter. Retrieved October 13, 2015, from http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/17/5519270/successful-in-game-dialogue-should-carry-players-forward

Large Vast Lands to Explore

Hi guys!!! Welcome to blog post #2 and if you haven’t already guessed it, this will mainly be centered around the exploring aspect found within many RPGs (Role-Playing Games) and for this post I’ll be using Skyrim as a prime example. 

 

For those who are not familiar with Skyrim, here’s a quick overview of the game. It’s an action (also fantasy) RPG that allows the player to play in first-person or third person, and essentially provides a virtual world where the player can freely roam and encounter/explore a number of different locations, such as dungeons, cities, towns, homesteads (lands that can be purchased to build a house), settlements, shrines, standing stones (magical stones that allow a player to give their character special abilities), landmarks (crossings, temples, etc.), camps (camps containing only giants or bandits or guards or settlers), caves, docks, clearings (ponds, forest clearings, etc.), dragon lairs, farms, ruins, forts, tombs, mines, lighthouses, ships and shipwrecks, watchtowers, rivers, mills (lumber mills, wheat mills) inns and taverns, castles, and guild headquarters (small societies that player can take membership in, such as the Thieves  Guild, Assassins Guild, etc.).

Skyrim was one of my first RPGs, and I had never before played a game that allowed an almost open-world map layout, so when I was exploring the vast virtual land, I spent hours upon hours exploring every nook and cranny of the land that the game had to offer.

Photo courtesy by Mottis86

Photo courtesy of GameBanshee

 The world of Skyrim is so large that the map of the land (in-game) is considered to have “an area of about 37.1 km² (14.3 square miles).” The sheer size of the world is so huge that they game developers decided to add mounts (ways to travel; horseback) to make it easier and faster to travel throughout Skyrim.

Photo courtesy of Bethesda Softworks

The best part about being able to explore in a game is that where ever you go, you’ll most likely run into or acquire a side-quest. Side-quests are quests that aren’t part of the main story/quest line, and have their own little background stories and objectives needed to complete the quest. And since the world of Skyrim is so large and vast, the game developers also decided to make the number of side-quests infinite, but there has been some speculation that there are about 100 or more side-quests, and if someone were to complete all of them (which would consist about almost a hundred hours of game play), certain side-quests (like collecting a bounty after killing a group of bandits) will regenerate.

There’s a quote that I found very compelling in a book called Everything Bad Is Good For You (by Steven Johnson) that relates to exploration in video games, “You’re more in control of the narrative now, but your supply of information about the narrative-whom you should talk to next, where that mysterious package has been hidden-is only partial, and so playing one of these games is ultimately all about filling in that information gap.”[1] Games much like Skyrim won’t tell you precisely where to go or who you must talk to, but you must figure it out on your own by simply running around and investigate anything that may seem interesting or out of the ordinary. This allows players to have a sense of freedom to explore wherever they want and do as they please, which encourages gamers to explore every part of the game to discover the limitless possibilities that could be found. 

Photo courtesy of aegyoing.tumblr.com

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[1] Johnson, S. (2005). Games. In Everything bad is good for you: How today's popular culture is actually making us smarter (p. 30). New York: Riverhead Books.