*SPOILERS FOR: Dragon Age: Origins, Bioshock, Fable II, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2*
I just recently finished my first play-through of Dragon Age: Origins and I have to say that it completely changed the way I think stories can be told through this medium. While Bioware has long been a master of storytelling through games, I do believe Dragon Age took a step into an altogether new level. It was the first time a game really challenged me to think about my own actions and the effects they may have on the world and myself. I didn't feel like a story was been told to me, I felt like the story was unfolding around me. When I say that, I don't mean that I crafted the story or that I alone decided plot, but I did have some role and I did make some real difference. Bioware created the world, the characters and the overall plot and it was up to me to react and interact with what they gave me. This may not seem too special considering that many games try to do this, but Dragon Age was the first one I ever played that actually pulled it off.
Fable II tried this and ultimately failed. The game gave you 3 endings, those three endings were constant no matter what you had done leading up to the end. No amount of evil and wickedness committed could deny me from a "happy" ending. If you picked the sacrifice ending your wife, children and dog died but that never made a real emotional impact on me. My first ending in Dragon Age was completely different. I choose to die rather than save myself and imprint a demon soul on a child. It actually took a long to for me to decide that, not because of gameplay concerns but because the game had actually made me care about the child, myself, and the characters I really grew close to. I knew that my death or the birth of this child would make a real impact on the world and the characters in the end and that can only happen in a video game. However, It's not only that last choice that effects your ending but ever choice you made since you pressed/clicked start.
I'll try to cut this short because I know tend to babble on. Games are venturing into a new form of story telling. Every other medium until now has been passive. Characters interacted with other characters and the reader/viewer/listener had no control and could not interact. The struggle with games and storytelling is getting the player to interact in a truly meaningful way, that's not something that really matters in other mediums and it's something entirely new. Also, games don't need to be open-ended to achieve this goal. Meaningful player involvement is possible in linear games. Bioshock is an excellent example. The "would you kindly" twist hammered home the fact that it was you who ventured through Rapture doing Atlas's bidding not a soulless vessel. You, the player, thought you had free will but you never really did you had to listen to Atlas to progress. Unlike Dragon Age, you didn't craft the character, you became a character already crafted. In this case, Linear stories in games can force us to do things we could never or would never want to do ourselves (or have these things done to us) and thus lets us see situations differently or understand the gravity of something distant on a more personal level. Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" stage is a good example. I have not played the game myself but the idea that the player is challenged to kill innocents is interesting. A question for those who've played it: A feeling of direct guilt and regret for your own actions, is that is what you felt when you gunned down those civilians? I believe that there can be no question that games can tell good stories and the very fact that developers are even trying to invoke emotions and moral responses is a testament to the fact that games are an art.
Sorry I wrote so much crap but this is a topic I'm really interested in. I hope I was coherent enough to make some good points.
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