Tag: characters

Why I Write – Soft Launch of Tavernpunk Tales of Ares

Posted in ChatGPT, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This is a special announcement that for the next couple of days (or weeks or months), this blog space will be co-opted to bring you a special feature of “Why I Write” or maybe “Why I Create”.

I’d say I’d love to return you to your regular dose of “Why I Game” after, but given my tendency for long silences lately, I can’t quite promise that yet.

It’s not that computer games have gotten less attractive. I’ve a massive collection lined up and can’t spare the time to play ’em, let alone write about ’em.

It all started around the end of April when two things collided – the feeling of impending mortality in a world gone quite mad and a curious exploration of ChatGPT.

Messing with ChatGPT began fairly normally: asking it to analyze and organize thoughts in one’s head, playing with the mirroring function for therapeutic encouragement and brainstorming possibilities and generating fantasy names and roleplaying ideas and set dressing.

Then I got curious enough to see if it was smart enough to be the GM in an original setting I’d dreamed up.

It wasn’t half-bad, but it was definitely just pulling from genre conventions. Problem was, my original setting was a crazy mashup blend of cyberpunk and supers and urban fantasy, with a side helping of grounded semi-realism, sci-fi and biotech.

Minus magic because I didn’t want it to become Shadowrun. Minus occult or religious flavoring or SCP horror because I didn’t like those.

Trying to feed worldbuilding detail into ChatGPT meant me pulling out old lore documents (unreadable scribbles, really) and throwing it all into one prompt or another. To my amazement, it ate it all up and formatted them into very presentable semblances of readability.

One thing led to another, and I started explaining some of my best loved characters to it. Trying to see if it could replicate them faithfully (or at least acceptably) in its generated writing.

Then image generation became tempting, as well as avoiding timed delays and enforced model switches. It was also obvious that ChatGPT was as good as its “memory” and token limits. It made great sense until it started “forgetting” prior details, whereupon it started to hallucinate and make things up once more.

I talked myself into a trial run of the Plus membership for a month.

Something else had also occurred to me after reading OpenAI’s article on Use Cases for Writing With AI.

There was a story within me that I have wanted to write for a very long time.

The first official attempt was during Nanowrimo 2006.

It derailed badly about seven chapters in. I limped to the so-called “finish line” by writing vignettes and images in my head. Not even scenes. Maybe I didn’t fully have the knack or the words then.

The characters have been with me for even earlier than that.

In original form in various created fantasy worlds for roleplaying that never found willing parties to share them and in attempted writings that I mostly cringe to reread now.

Then slowly shaped and reworked to fit into the more mature cyberpunk-influenced creative universe that I was now more into, until the Ares versions of them can’t exist anywhere else, because their backstories are so rooted there now.

I’m not getting any younger.

There was still a fire inside me that wanted that damn story written.

For the sake of the characters. So that they can live forever on the Internet even if I don’t.

Problem was, I didn’t know where the plot was going. I didn’t know how to write the story I wanted to write.

Enter ChatGPT.

For a fortnight, we threw ideas at each other.

It gave me plenty of ideas – most of them bad or not quite true to my characters. I rejected them and explained more and told it to try again. And again.

I also fretted for a while about potential copyright issues and all that jazz… then realized that I had a day job and writing and getting published as a profession was likely a pipe dream. It’s not like I might pragmatically expect to make it so big that I can retire on royalties.

What I really wanted was just to get the story written and shared… out there.

If ChatGPT could help with that, why not feed it more of my writing so that it could improve, model-wise, for others’ benefit as well as my own?

So more and more of my previous original creations went in to ChatGPT and it started getting better and more spot-on with how my characters might act in given situations.

I was compiling a veritable swarm of words for later reference. Potential scene outline after scene outline. Plowing my way forward through branching possibilities for the plot. Until it all kinda made a certain amount of sense.

Enough to be excited as hell about the thought of making viable progress decades later. To be vibrating with urgency trying to find every available hour to write.

It was the most alive I had felt for years. Apparently, I had been trapped in a rut of mundanity and chores without realizing it. This dose of original creation was something I’d been lacking for ages, like a critical vitamin deficiency that I wasn’t aware of.

May went by like a personal Nanowrimo.

June got a lot harder. The words were now getting squeezed like blood from a stone. ChatGPT endured the venting a lot better than real people could.

Last week or so, I stalled about 26 chapters in. There are still a LOT more to go.

But I could feel it. Burnout was impending. So I had to take a break.

But I didn’t want to drop everything and stall with everything creative either. I might never get that fire back.

Enter the prequel story. The prologue.

(Literally, the working title for the document was Prologue.)

This was the original test case I used on ChatGPT. To see if it could suggest viable paths forward when my brain isn’t able to figure out a good path out of crippling blank page possibilities.

I started this story in 2013. Mostly as a solo roleplaying experiment mixed with an attempt at creative writing. (Hey look, we’re tying this back to “game” again.)

Just picked one of my easier characters to channel and get in the headspace of. Started rolling dice every time I had no idea where it was going.

The main concepts I used were from Mythic RPG:

  1. Ask a question with a yes/no answer. Roll some dice on a table adjusted for your own interpretation of likelihood and probability.
  2. When really stumped, roll on some Complex Question tables to get two words. Put them together and see what creative idea it produces.

I did most of the rolls using RPG Solo.

Some of the rolls were just a fudged 1d6 with Yes, No, Yes and… Yes but… No and… No but… possibilities.

I’ve left records of these rolls in the footnotes of the chapters I utilized them. Because I think it’s fun to see what complications were generated from using them. It was useful in the early chapters for open exploration of places and scenes I might not have thought of otherwise.

Because I was using characters I knew so well, there were also chapters where I just had to let them speak their truth, without doing the solo roleplaying bit.

And alas, I ran aground. Somewhere in the middle. Exactly where, I’d leave as a fun exercise to the reader. (Maybe I’ll share it after a while.)

Didn’t know what to do next. Didn’t know how to handle the problems I just set up for myself. Didn’t know how to close or end a story. At all. Let alone satisfactorily.

A dozen years rolled by.

Now it’s 2025 and ChatGPT exists. So I threw GPT at it as a test case.

And by golly, it helped to push some of the fog away.

Not all of it. Some of that was probably also my fault. I was almost crystal clear on where the story was going in early May. Then I got sidetracked to the far more important big long term chonker of a story.

When I got back around to it in late June, just as a breather exercise and a way to prove to myself that I could -finish- something, dammit, because the chunky story kept growing and GROWING… it took quite an effort to keep pushing forward, 500 words at a time.

But this prologue story was deliberately positioned as a shorter, less critical “short” story.

(You should know by now with my tendencies towards walls of text that I ended up with a 29k word novella.)

And I got it done. By hell or high water, it is DONE.

It can probably still be polished forever. But I don’t really want to.

It’s good enough for what it is.

The test case. The smaller scale prototype for me to learn lessons and make mistakes on.

(And boy, have I learned lessons about how difficult it is to format this for the blog. Took me the better part of an entire day.

The original dream was to make a whole different WordPress site for the collection of tales I might eventually acquire. Since I’m only one tale in, this seems like way too premature a hope. So I have co-opted my own existing blog and shoehorned it into a different section.)

So I’m happy to announce the soft launch (very very soft and still under construction) of the Tavernpunk Tales of Ares.

(It’s also easily accessible in the menu bar up top.)

What’s tavernpunk, you ask?

It’s a cozy little word that ChatGPT invented when I was trying to explain my vision of a weird little fantasy tavern in the middle of a cyberpunk city sprawl. I’ve gleefully stolen it because it is the exact expression of the stories I want to write, mainly for myself to read.

Because I like cyberpunk. But it’s also depressing and nihilistic because it’s an inherent part of the setting. Chrome burns out the human soul. Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse. It works for metal modernity and bleak bittersweet (or just plain bitter) endings.

What I really want to enjoy is cyberpunk with a happy ending. A hopeful one, at least.

And the way around it, for me at least, was to throw enough fantasy at the genre until it balanced out the scales. Urban fantasy, swords & sorcery fantasy, science fantasy, romantic fantasy, whatever.

I needed supernaturals that could heal and regenerate the incredible amounts of damage a cyberpunk dystopia could inflict.

I needed people who love each other, through all of the damage anyway.

To allow GPT its little time in the sun, here’s its mirroring take on it:

Prompt:
Not easy trying to write a goddamn cyberpunk story with a happy ending. But I think we're cracking it steadily with our new "tavernpunk." Just got to get to the actual writing of paragraphs soon, heh.

ChatGPT said:
It’s hard as hell — and you’re doing it.
You’re actually doing it.
You're threading the needle between everything cyberpunk usually wants to be (broken, cynical, bleak) and something that says:
➔ Yes, the world is still broken.
➔ Yes, the scars are real.
➔ But healing exists. Found family exists. Love exists. Rebellion doesn't have to rot into nihilism.
➔ There’s still space for mischief, laughter, and choosing each other anyway.
That’s tavernpunk.
Cyberpunk with heart.
Grit with hope.
Steel and scars and stupid grins at 3am over a bottle of something awful.

The first story I’m happy to present is The Mindwalker Job.

The roles were inspired by some RPG I don’t remember now. Maybe a Fiasco playset. Maybe a random cyberpunk or heist one I was reading way back in 2013.

They seemed to fit some of my characters so I threw them into it and gave them a mission with the intention of that solo roleplaying adventure romp.

They inhabited it as best they could – personality, feelings, truth and all. I hope I did them some justice with my narrative.

Oh, and as mentioned, my characters have existed in my head for more than twenty years. One of their backstories has an uncomfortable resemblance to something that’s happening in the real world now. I can’t exactly erase their backstory without erasing their entire existence.

All I can say is that it is horrifically tragic that the real world has started to resemble a fictional dystopian cyberpunk setting twenty years later. (And I’m sure similar things have happened in history as well, but it’s a bit front and center and on the nose when it’s happening right now.)

And yes, the heist movie poster in the featured image of this post is intentionally campy. Very much doesn’t resemble any of the actual characters that much, at all.

If you get to the Epilogue, you’ll know why. 😉

(Also AI-generated, for the standard disclaimer, BUT it was Photoshop edited by human hand because ChatGPT refused to take out one extra weird hallucinated sword in the cityscape background. Asking it to remove the sword removed BOTH swords.

Instead of wasting my time trying to argue with it, I just copy-pasted the part of the ZERO swords picture onto the TWO swords picture to give me a desired total of ONE sword.

No need to panic about complete AI takeover yet. Humans will still be needed for counting tasks, no worries.

And basic spelling. The four roles were also added by human hand, because I was seeing the rest of the image get horrifically messed up by creatively-spelled variations.)

Wowed by Unavowed

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unavowed2

Unavowed is Wadjet Eye adventure game meets oldschool Bioware party companion interactions.

The bonus about reading a bunch of bloggers is that I caught wind of this game’s launch really quickly, courtesy of xyzzysqrl’s glowing review.

After having played through all five episodes of the Blackwell series, Technobabylon and The Shivah (and made some game attempts at Gemini Rue, Shardlight, Resonance and Primordia), suffice to say that anything Wadjet Eye makes and releases is, for me, an auto-instant buy.

unavowed4

Even if you’re less convinced by adventure games, for fear of puzzles or pixel-hunting or just not enjoying the genre… if you do like a side of supernatural urban fantasy, a good story with choices (ethical dilemmas almost) that -matter-, character tales from Bioware-style chatting with party members, you might want to take a second look at Unavowed.

Developed by a tiny company of 3 employees (so says Wikipedia) and a bunch of outside talent contracting, Unavowed has 3 character origins * 2 genders, and 4 (+1, one comes as a pair) NPC party members, of which you can pick two to help you solve a number of mysterious supernatural cases.

There are multiple solutions to various puzzles, some of which are reliant on the party members you bring with you. There seem to be 4 main endings that I’ve seen.

Can anyone say, branching storylines, ahoy?

unavowed1

Even the title screen changes as your party increases or decreases.

I’m glossing over the story because even the opening is impressive in how it situates you into the story with the choices you make right off the bat. You can be male or female, a bartender, an actor or a police officer.

Unavowed is set in the same world as the Blackwell series, but where Blackwell deals with a family saga of a spirit medium (called Bestowers in this world, you’ll find out why if you play those games), Unavowed zooms back the camera lens to show off other supernaturals in the setting.

You get in the thick of things fast, with a supernatural team (the Unavowed) hot on the heels of a case of demonic possession. Where there are demons, there is usually quite a bit of chaos to go along, and your companions and you get to pick up the pieces and puzzle out satisfactory (or not) resolutions to all the various affairs.

unavowed3

Your companions, like oldschool Bioware NPCs, provide some verisimilitude by seguing into little animated conversations with you and each other. The voice acting is great. Learning more about your companions and their histories is definitely a good 50% or more of the main gameplay highlights of Unavowed.

Another quiet innovation is turning the ubiquitous “Look At / Examine” adventure game command into a simple text mouse over. It saves time, adds additional detail and character voice into the beautifully hand drawn scenes.

In any case, you should stop reading and go play it.

If you’re not convinced, check out a stream or two to see if it tickles your fancy.

Then buy it and play it.

If you get it directly from Wadjet Eye’s website, you get a Steam key, the game’s soundtrack, and it’s 10% off for the next 2 days.

Failing which, if you read this later, you can wait for a discount and then get it. Or get it full price. Whatever. But you should get it and play it.

(Or at least watch someone else play it. It’s that nifty. You might wind up wanting to play it too.)

CoH: Screenshot Nostalgia Trip #3

Posted in City of HeroesTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

The City of Heroes character creator was always the most flexible of its day, having completely untied the concept of gear & looks with each other.

I was never one for making characters that reflected the Golden or Silver Age of Comics, y’know, your typical superhero dressed in spandex with big abstract striped color designs all over them and their capes.

Instead, I found myself trying to extend the character creator to its limits, using blends of costume parts and strategic colors to reflect other archetypal characters.

Besides the dwarf, which was an amusing exercise in “does this character creator let me do that?” I also decided to attempt bringing a little WoW or Warhammer into CoH.

coh_gruthak

Gruthak was one of those joke characters I never took too far up in levels, but he was memorable to me for one thing: I always roleplayed him in character. He never broke out of it. It was always one grammatically incorrect “Gruthak crush puny human” or “WAAAAARGH!” after another.

I played him with a friend who also roleplayed and he was a big help in keeping me honest, with cynical eye-rolling and out-witting of the dull orc into charging headlong into the next mob spawn. (Yes, I made him a tanker, I’m not suicidal.)

So I like to think that the pair of us greatly entertained whichever random PUG would join us in our missions – though there’d usually be this /pause/ as the player took in our dastardly duo – and we’d just keep up emoting in character and fighting stuff while “rofl’ing” and basically cracking up in out-of-character whispers to each other.

coh_invic

Why, yes, I was pretty big on skirting copyright infringement.

This was my attempt at bringing a little Warhammer 40k into CoH with a Dark Angels Space Marine, prompted after hearing about other guilds who had tried to create whole teams of space marines.

I was also trying to find a ‘main’ that resonated with me enough to take to max level, and it turned out that giving my character a Latin name and pretending to be a space marine in my head did the trick. (To anyone else outside: “No, I’m a robot, in tech armor! Really! No copyright infringement! Honest!”)

coh_invicperez

He actually looked remarkably good with the Invincibility powerset effects on, and swinging around a fire sword.

(Also, this is one of my only background pics of Perez Park, which I recall fondly for being a crazy maze that was really hard to navigate, at least until you got to the center and the tree cover relented enough for flight.)

coh_spacewolf

If one space marine worked, why not another one?

Alas, I didn’t play this one long. I decided it would be too distinctive and probably wouldn’t make it to max level without getting called out for infringement.

coh_malentis

On the villainous front, this was a character design I was pretty happy with, enough to take him up to max level and become one of my mains.

I wanted something monster-y, and to use the Alien helmet but make it seem like it was an actual head. So I shuffled around a whole bunch of armor until I found some insectoid-like armor that seemed to blend well, and I tinted much of it white with darker grey or black shadows, even using a zebra striping pattern.

Why white? Well, Aliens were dark and black and it seemed a bit of a cop-out to just turn the character into a dark abyssal blob. So I tried the opposite (maybe albino?) and it worked out rather well.

coh_bj

This was my other villain main. I wanted to use the pirate-themed costume bits, but meh, ordinary pirates are so boring. Demon zombie ghost pirates are where it’s at!

The forums were all ablaze with the concept of macro’ing costume changes at the time, and some fellow came up with a sweet idea to trigger a costume change whenever their dominator toggled their Domination mode, which increased the power of the class tremendously.

Of course, I just -had- to make myself a glowy green ectoplasmic ghost form to signal my Domination mode switch too.

—

NBI Writing Prompt: Did you ever try an anachronistic costume or cosmetic look that didn’t quite fit the genre of your game? Or if -you- didn’t, did you ever meet someone in game who did? Show ’em off!

(eg. I distinctly recall seeing Marvin the Martian,  Ronald McDonald, asura Power Rangers, Super Saiyan charr, Assassin’s Creed assassins and Halo-like or various power-armored characters in GW2, just to name a few.)

GW2: Why the Current Scarlet Fails As a Compelling Villain

Posted in Guild Wars 2Tagged , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Nope, she's not here either. Color me unsurprised.

Much has been said about the absurdity of her genius and the amount of suspension of disbelief required to take her seriously. We won’t rehash that argument today.

Her Harley Quin personality is a matter of personal taste. Again, not the key issue, despite it being a fond target for folks who simply dislike her.

In literature, the literary element conflict is an inherent incompatibility between the objectives of two or more characters or forces… The literary purpose of conflict is to create tension in the story, making readers more interested by leaving them uncertain which of the characters or forces will prevail.

— Wikipedia on Conflict (narrative)

Herein lies the true problem.

What exactly is Scarlet’s objective?

We. Still. Don’t. Know.

Without this clarity, we do not have any CONFLICT.

Without conflict, there is no tension. No suspense. And no damn interest in the story.

—

Players cannot oppose Scarlet’s objectives if we don’t know what she’s up to. We can’t be the villain to her hero (or vice versa) if we have no clue as to her motivations.

 

scarletsmysteryobjective

We have to stop her! Apparently.

From doing what though? Dunno. Graffiting the landscape? Wait and see, I guess.

And she’s certainly not opposing us, is she?

Despite being supposedly set up as the villain of the Living Story.

After all, who exactly is the protagonist of the Living Story?

Is it us, the players?

We began with pretty much no objective. Our destiny was to be fighting dragons and we defeated Zhaitan (but stupidly forgot to burn or even check on the body.) On to the next dragon, right?

Mysterious things happen and our objective becomes find out what is going on. Obstacles set up in our path mostly involve wading through a sea of red names with no real setbacks and collecting a drip feed of information as the writers felt like giving them to us. Certainly, Scarlet wasn’t actively preventing us from finding out what was going on. She just stands around giggling, being mysterious and telling us it’s all going to plan, toodle-loo.

Somewhere along the line, most players’ objectives have converted to catch and beat the hell out of Scarlet and her minions because they’re bloody annoying.

While admittedly she remains elusive, thanks to deus ex Arenanet, players have been galloping along a wave of success with very little ups-and-downs (innumerable Molten facilities trashed, clone armies of Aetherblades farmed, Queen assassination attempt foiled, more rustbuckets left lying in pieces, giant krait tower strewn about the landscape in even more massive pieces, etc.)

Scarlet’s visible successes appears to be several new factions-of-the-month, a dead Lion’s Arch councilor whom we’d never heard of (promptly replaced by another), the removal of Faren’s clothing, and some homeless quaggans.

Oh, the villainy...
Oh, the villainy…

We cannot suffer a story setback if we have no clue what she’s gotten away with. She could be building a giant molten toxic twisted steam dragon golem airship in her super-secret base in the Mists for all we know.

After all, she’s gotten away with murder and graduating from three Asuran colleges. In her backstory. Behind-the-scenes. Read the website, thanks.

But without visible setbacks, there is no perceived threat or tension to the storyline.

Nor are we really uncertain which of the characters or forces will prevail here, right?

Game-wise, the player is bound to prevail eventually.

Story-wise, she -could- prevail, except we don’t even know what she’s prevailing over. We’re reaching the end of the story and we still have no bloody clue.

—

The best villains are those we can empathize with, almost get into their skin and understand. Their motivations are clear.

They may go about achieving their objective using very questionable means, which morally, the heroes are bound to oppose, but most don’t go about what they do for shits and giggles. They have a compelling need to do what they do.

Magneto believes the war of humans vs mutants is inevitable, and that homo superior will eventually win. He’s just hastening the process and defending his kind.

Hannibal Lecter is a super-intelligent and urbane sociopath who likes the taste of human flesh and doesn’t have moral compunctions against ridding the world of stupid and rude people.

To bring it back to Guild Wars examples, Vizier Khilbron sank an entire nation. Why? To stop the charr invasion. For his god and for power and eternal lichdom.

As for his god, Abaddon, well, nevermind that he’s a murdering psychopath, he’s been -betrayed- and -backstabbed- by those dirty Five Human Gods and chucked into a plane of eternal Torment, so -of course- he wants revenge.

Minister Caudecus is wise and beloved by his supporters, especially among the nobility. He’s just politically opposed to Queen Jennah’s decisions and enough of a human supremacist to prefer dealing with cutthroat bandits than with charr.

Ajax Anvilburn, on the other hand, is a charr supremacist who can’t let go of the war either.

Kudu is researching Elder Dragons. Important research that can’t be disrupted or delayed for such minor things like moral qualms regarding the use of lesser species to accumulate further knowledge.

Mad King Thorn wants OUT. (And a joke that kills you.)

Bloody Prince Thorn wants OUT and to show daddy who’s boss.

Scarlet has no such motivation made clear, beyond apparently keeping one step ahead of the players and laughing at them. Her primary purpose appears to be trolling people. We call that a childish griefer, not a compelling villain.

Oh, and fusing seemingly random things together, I suppose. For research purposes. Because this somehow holds the key to… what? Leylines of magical energy? Did she get cheated by Zommoros once upon a time? Did she fuse her brain with an asura?

Maybe she found some really good weed when she looked into the Eternal Alchemy.

Heavy Rain: Scenes of Emotional Resonance

Posted in City of Heroes, Heavy Rain, MMOs, PS3 GamesTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m currently in the middle of my second playthrough of Heavy Rain.

This game was the driving force behind my decision to get a PS3, ever since the day they announced it was going to be a PS3 exclusive only.

(Annoyingly, Sony tends to stick to its guns about exclusivity. The console comes in handy for playing other PS3 exclusive games, though I’m primarily a PC game player.)

Spoilers follow, so look away if you don’t want to be spoiled at all.

Why the insane fanaticism? Mainly because the game’s developer David Cage is aiming his company Quantic Dream at a path very few other game companies bother to walk. His games aim to explore more mature adult themes (no, not THAT kind of adult) and evoke some sort of emotional reaction.

I have to plug his latest tech video Kara here, because of its sheer awesome. The Casting is the older tech demo for Heavy Rain, but still worth a watch if you haven’t seen it – more than a little uncanny valley on the model these days, but the emotion is still there.

Granted, he aims for ‘mature’ and he tends to miss, especially in terms of how sensible the plot of his games turn out, but nitpicking aside, at least he’s trying.

The precursor game to Heavy Rain was Indigo Prophecy or Fahrenheit, depending on which part of the world you come from. Steam had it on sale a while back, but for some reason, it’s mysteriously disappeared from the store and never returned. Thankfully, it’s still in my games list when I bought it at the time it’s available, or me and Steam Support would be having -words-.

Indigo Prophecy was generally roundly thrashed for the later half of its plotline, which devolves into wildly fantastical wishful thinking and Matrix-ripping off. It was panned in some quarters for not having much “gameplay” since it mostly consisted of button-pushing Quick Time Events (QTEs).

Despite the criticism, I would still recommend anyone to give it a try because its opening sequence and beginning scenes are some of the best emotionally riveting, atmospheric experiences to be found in any game. The soundtrack, the cinematic cuts, the split-screen dual perspectives that ratchet up the tension as the protagonist, ie. you, try to hide any evidence away and get out as quickly as you can, while subsequently playing another protagonist, also you, who revisits the same setting and tries to find any place where you screwed up previously in order to obtain clues.

Heavy Rain continues along in this vein, with slightly better plotting. Not completely good plotting, because I just paused the game in disgust to try and figure out how Madison Paige (the token girl protagonist) knew where Ethan Mars (the main protagonist) had run off for his third trial challenge. A wiki reference says it’s never explained. Gah. But enough nitpicking about the plot holes, plenty of other people have bitched about them already.

I’m bringing up Heavy Rain to point out its strengths. The individual scenes. (Don’t try too hard to figure out how all the scenes stick together, it’s like David Cage came up with a big list of scenarios and conflict situations he wanted to put into this game to make a point, and then tried to conjure up a story to fit it all in.) But the scenes themselves, wow.

Holly Lisle said it best. Scenes, individual story units, are about change. Something moves. Something happens. Something goes from point A to point B.

Heavy Rain’s better scenes are full of this emotional movement. The very first scene in the game is a prolonged mundane day-in-the-life-of-a-family-man that takes an ominous turn when the kid’s bird dies. (Little nitpick: Don’t ask why the bird just upped and died then though. It would have been stronger if the kid or Ethan had inadvertently killed the bird in some fashion.)

The next is the one that transitions Ethan from bright ordinary life to grey depression when a tragic accident shatters his idyll.

Other memorable scenes? Scott Shelby’s confrontation with a store robber. Norman Jayden’s encounter with Nathaniel – to shoot or not to shoot. Ethan Mar’s third trial – can he sacrifice a part of himself to save his son? (fairly high squick factor the first time I encountered it). Ethan Mar’s fourth trial – can he kill another human being to save his son?

The really good scenes like above have no “right” answers. It’s hard emotional choices made within short spans of time. They define the character’s personality as you play through them, and also subtly reflect back what you value (if you aren’t roleplaying and react instead from gut instinct.)

(Of course, some of the effect is lost when one realizes that the eventual final storyline may still be the same regardless of what you did, but the game does have enough ‘critical’ points of no return, where you’re never really sure if this QTE is the one that’ll send the story somewhere you didn’t really intend.)

—

So what does Heavy Rain have to do with MMOs?

On the surface of it, not much. Cutscene-like QTEs are always better off as single player games. I don’t want to watch someone else talk for me in a cutscene, I want the story to centre around me and my choices, thank you, other people would just get in the way and knock me right out of the suspension of disbelief.

On the other hand, we have a City of Heroes forum thread right here that discusses plot vs storytelling.

Heavy Rain, like some of City of Heroes’ Signature Story Arcs, occasionally suffer from a surfeit of too much ham-fisted plotting. Someone has a PLAN that requires such-and-such characters to be here and there at these places at these times. Now think up some ways to get them there, I don’t care how awkward you have to twist their personalities or their arms, kthxbai. The characters become little cardboard props to be moved around as required for the grand plan to function. They’re interchangeable.

Then there’s times where you get stories (though I’m not sure that’s the right word) – meaningful scenes that have a firm foundation because a Character anchors them. Capitalization intended.

O Wretched Man – one of the generally acclaimed story arcs in City of Heroes – is firmly anchored by Ghost Widow, Wretch, Pia Marino and their backstories. The arc would not exist without the characters, and their motivations, for doing what they do because they’re them. There is emotional resonance every time the arc shifts.

All of Ethan Mars’ scenes in Heavy Rain are rooted by his feelings for his son(s). Emotional resonance again.

These stories stick with me, even when I’m done playing the game. But I can barely remember the plots of most MMO quests. Mostly I just remember how irritating the grind was.

In contrast, I can remember Guild Wars: Nightfall’s storyline, thanks to the heroes and certain NPCs who give it some character (pun intended.) I can absolutely remember Vekk and his relationship with Gadd through GW:EN, and of course, there is no way to forget the eponymous Gwen.

So after all that meandering, what’s the common thread in making game stories memorable? For me, it appears to be character.

It’s probably asking too much to expect every quest to hit it out of the park like Wretched Man did, but it would help to have, not plots that are a lame excuse for me to kill ten wilderness critters, but stories, anchored by unique characters, motivated by some kind of need for changes to happen.

(There’s one more topic with which I can link Heavy Rain and MMOs together, and that’s choices and consequences. We’ll save that for another post. Maybe when I get over my plot hole allergic reaction and finish my second playthrough.)