Still Room for the Written Word

Text has always been the one of the foundations of the entertainment medium, ever since the development of language: books, sonnets, poems and the old text-based adventures. However, in the world of today with tremendously high budgets fuelling the game industry in terms of explosively visual cut-scenes and impressive vocal narratives it seems there is a fading position for text as a key story telling device.

Enter Lost Odyssey, which I believe to be the ‘true’ Final Fantasy XIII. Lost Odyssey, developed by Mistwalker (founded by Final Fantasy’s founder) strips JRPG gaming back to the basics, with the original turn based combat and random encounters in all its glory. The game took players on a journey with strong character development and an emotive portrayal of being alone, trapped outside the passage of time and it very effectively used the basic narrative use of text to do so.

This almost archaic form of storytelling combined well written text, Nobuo Uematsu’s atmospheric musical score and various background sounds. All this proved to work wonders for the development of the characters. Although most of these ‘Dream Sequences’ are optional and only provide back-story for the game’s protagonists, players who took the time to read through them would find themselves genuinely moved.

‘Hanna’s departure’ was a particular segment which aided to develop the character of Kaim Argonar incredibly (and if you missed these parts I advise you to check it out now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHM2JUhIwAg&feature=related). This short story tells the tale of a girl called Hanna, so riddled with illness that she cannot leave the inn she rests in. She relies on the infrequent visits of the immortal Kaim to hear his gripping exploits of the outside world, where Kaim would only talk about the good parts. To cut it short Hanna’s death is quickly approaching and Kaim’s final lie to her is that she will embark on a journey of her own, one that he can never go on because of his curse of ever-lasting life. I really can’t do it justice by the way, see it for yourself.

The short story is optional as I believe the developers did not want to risk forced text-based story telling as a substitution for full cinematic dialogue. But after returning from the story and being faced back with Kaim, whom I previously believed to be a fairly strong-and-silent one dimensional character, suddenly he had depth and the weight of hardship on his shoulders which justifies his gruff demeanour of keeping everyone at arms length. What many games try to achieve through hours of voice work and visuals was conveyed in under 10 minutes with simple text.

It’s safe to say that the advancement in technology has brought a decline to the use of text in video games. Nine years ago for instance, Morrowind used only text for storytelling, save the introduction, final encounter and brief greetings which I found incredibly immersive. In some cases, less is more and text allows you to project your imagination of voices into the character speaking; almost ‘personalising’ them. Examples of this today can be seen with the works of Bethesda and Obsidian in recent Fallout 3 and New Vegas, where your dialogue is selected and not spoken, defining your in game character with the chosen utterance and your own voice.

I’m certainly not saying that text in video games is the best way to tell the story and invoke emotion. Take Silent Hill 2, the expression of emotions felt past, present and future of James Sunderland are symbolised through the monsters you face, manifestations of feelings he and even you may have faced. This proves to be an engaging story telling technique, just as powerful as the use of text which I believe to be fairly untapped in today’s gaming industry.

Text really should have a stronger place in modern video games. I recently completed Black Ops’ single-player story with the disorientating over-the-top visuals coupled with Avatar’s Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) highly confusing accent narrating the back-story made for a rather weak experience compared to what is possible for games using less than half the budget Activision provided for Treyarch this time around. Although these impressive cutscenes do present us with human faces and voices we can relate to with greater ease, I couldn’t help but contrast this back to Lost Odyssey and how the simplicity used to provide back-story was so much more effective and natural.

Of course not all gamers are in it for story development though, I just need to refer to the thousands of people who have Halo Reach or Black Ops that haven't and most likely never will play the single player campaign. There are also the droves of casual gamers keeping puzzle games afloat means that unfortunately great story telling, which promotes the gaming industry as an artistic genre, is truly unappreciated in these classes.

Whilst video games are capable of presenting emotions through are much more aesthetically accessible way with using a human face and voice, there is still a strong place for written word to tell the story and Lost Odyssey is a prime example of that. I’m not suggesting that all games need to include text based sections to unravel the plot, but if used to its full potential, it can create some very powerful moments.