One of the most compelling storylines I have ever experienced from any storytelling medium didn’t come from a movie, television show, or book. It wasn’t orated in a church or shared with me by an elder. Instead, it came from a video game. In the game, Ghosts of Tsushima, you take on the role of Jin Sakai, a samurai whose home island off the coast of Japan is invaded by the Mongolian Empire. What unfolded before my eyes was a beautiful interactive story heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa films, which is exactly what the creators intended. While following Jin’s journey, I began to feel his struggle to balance his Samurai honor with the need to do anything to help take back his island. I became so invested that I spent most of my time over the next week experiencing every bit of storytelling the game had to offer. Everything from the world-building to the character development was deeply thought out and progressed as an Oscar-worthy film would. I couldn’t put the controller down because I always needed to know what happened next. When it finally came to an end, as I do with a good book, I went right back to the beginning to experience it all over again.

We’ve all had this experience before when we picked up a book that we couldn’t put down or started a show that we had to binge all the episodes of after seeing just the first one. This is what good storytelling can do to a person. We get enthralled with the lore, we fall in love with or learn to hate the characters, and we emotionally invest ourselves along the way. These stories become important to us and to many others. A few become culturally significant, lasting the test of time, and have been shared for countless generations. Now we have a plethora of ways to share these stories, from books to movies. One way that is often overlooked though, is video games. The video game industry is by far the most profitable of the entertainment industries. It is more profitable than the music and movie industries combined (Richter, “Are You Not Entertained?”). This doesn’t mean it has become the preferred way to consume story-driven content though. With that said, some of the best stories in modern-day pop culture have come from action-adventure games like Ghosts of Tsushima, and the hugely popular The Last of Us series. Video games have also revolutionized the way we experience stories, and there are no signs of a slowdown in innovation anytime soon. Creators will continue to evolve how they make new story-driven experiences by introducing new technology to immerse players and allow accessibility, using more trained actors in the process, and focusing on telling Hollywood blockbuster-caliber stories.

To understand this process, one must understand the importance of storytelling. Storytelling serves many purposes outside of just entertainment and escapism.  It’s also an important part of any culture, and it’s been the foundation of how we teach important lessons in most societies since the dawn of human existence. Even before the existence of agriculture, archeologists discovered humans were using primitive forms of communication to tell stories. It’s estimated that the oldest evidence of storytelling from homo sapiens dates back 36,000 years. The evidence comes from paintings found on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in France (Van Pelt, “The History of Storytelling.”). It’s a story that reflects the time in which it was created, one of a tribe who were hunters and gathers. The use of imagery and spoken words to share stories continued throughout human history. It eventually evolved into the complex system of morality, culture, language, and imagination that we know as storytelling now. Video games have taken that to a new level, by allowing people to participate in the storytelling experience directly. Video games, like the classic tabletop roleplaying games from the 70s and 80s, allow someone to take on many different roles and experience them as characters we’ve created ourselves or ones that were created by the game’s writers and designers. As mentioned, the best genre to find these incredible stories is action-adventure games.

The action-adventure genre is very diverse and by far the most popular among video games. They started out as simple games, usually question-driven, such as The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System. These games at the time were more about the entertainment factor and less about storytelling. It could be as simple as an on-screen message saying, “Go save the Princess,” and that was about all the story context you got. Now they’ve evolved into narrative-driven story vehicles, such as Ghost of Tsushima. Rather than simple objectives, the games are filled with deep stories, complex lore, and character development that immerse the player in the world. The action-adventure genre also gives the player a bit less freedom in creating a character or deviating from the main objective. This sets it apart from other story-driven genres, such as role-playing games and first-person shooters. Neil Druckmann, the creator of The Last of Us series, summarizes this difference perfectly, “our characters have their own wants, needs, obsessions, loves. And, we’re saying when you’re playing our game, we want you to tap into who they are and play the game as them, not as you, as them,” (Bitner and Tucker, “The Last of Us”). This gives games like The Last of Us, and games like it, a unique movie-like quality that is integral to any story-driven game.

Creators of story-driven action-adventure games are one of the top groups of innovators in the gaming industry. They often incorporate brand-new technology or create new versions of old technology to help create the most entertaining and cinematic experiences they can. Some of the technologies incorporated to bring these games to life are the same we see used in major film and television productions. This includes digital artistry, digital cinematography, and motion capture technology. In fact, motion capture technology would not exist as we know it today if it weren’t for the video game industry. As Scripps News notes in their report on why video games are starting to look more like movies, motion capture technology was pioneered by video game companies. They go on to talk about how Akklaim, co-publisher of the popular Mortal Combat series, was approached by Peter Jackson for a sort of collaboration. This eventually led to the creation of one of the most iconic motion capture performances in film history, Gollum from the Lord of the Rings franchise (Picht, “Why Video Games Are Looking More Like Movies.”). Since the late 1990s, motion capture technology and performances became more common in triple-A games. Today, using this technology is a standard industry practice in developing almost all triple-A titles released for any gaming system. This has inspired game developers to seek out professional actors to help capture these performances, bringing a whole new level of immersion and depth to the stories in the games.

Naughty Dog, the studio responsible for The Last of Us and Uncharted, has set the gold standard for the industry when it comes to using motion capture for developing games. Often hailed as having the most realistic performances in video games, The Last of Us series used the same professional actors for the motion capture performances that it did for the voice-over roles. This allowed the actors to fully take on the role they were playing, much like a movie or television role, which they had all done previously. Developing complex storylines and characters will continue to entice more professional and trained actors to seek roles in video games. As actor Anna Rust notes in her interview with Game Rant, “People are finally waking up to how great games can be, and actors can get really fully fleshed out characters in games now.” Rust has done both video game acting and starred in traditional television roles, such as Amazon’s Carnival Row (Meyer-Lorey, “Actress Explains Why Some Major Film Actors are Moving to Video Games.”). This statement is becoming truer with each new triple-A title being announced. The Last of Us Part 2 featured the same actors reprising the main roles, and even added veteran actors Jeffery Wright, known for his recent role as Commissioner Gordon in The Batman. Keanu Reeves, star of The Matrix franchise, also played a big role in the recent Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2077 is also introducing a character in its next downloadable content release that will be played by the star of the Luther series, Idris Elba (Ochami, “20 Best Video Games with Hollywood Actors.”). As Rust mentioned in her interview, the quality roles and deep stories will continue to attract big names such as these to the industry, and video game writers are taking full advantage of the momentum.

 In an interview with ScriptMag.com, Ian Ryan, the lead writer of Ghost of Tsushima, talks about how writing dramatic scenes for video games is a very similar process to writing a screenplay. The exception for them was when they introduced the ability for the player to choose certain dialogue options, sometimes changing the outcome and pace of the conversation and scene (Alexander, “Interview with ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ Video Game Writer Ian Ryan.”). This kind of storytelling isn’t new, as many adults over 30 may remember the “choose your own adventure” books from their youth. Although video games often take advantage of this game mechanic and writing style, games like the Uncharted series rely more on hands-off cinematic experiences to immerse the player. When you’re playing as Nathan Drake in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, you take on his character entirely. Your only real duty as a player is to guide him through the linear path Naughty Dog’s writers set before him. The only places a player can innovate are puzzle-solving and gun fights. Outside of that, the writers have planned every pathway, every cinematic, and every line of dialogue.

Noelle Warner, who has a degree in English and studied British Literature in graduate school, notes in her TED Talk that when a person is playing video games and the character they control dies, they don’t say that character died, they say “I died.” This is symbolic of the deep connection we make with characters in story-driven games, much like The Last of Us, in which Warner is a major fan (Warner, “Video Games That Stay with You.”). This has become a driving factor for video game writers, as we see more triple-A, and even indie titles, take on more serious dialogue and character development. With the success of narrative-driven games like The Last of Us and Uncharted, gamers and critics alike have shown much more scrutiny towards storylines in games. As Warner also mentions in her speech, 25-year veteran Evan Skolnick refers to most game stories being the same quality as a direct-to-disc movie (Warner, “Video Games That Stay with You.”).

Sometimes, this isn’t necessarily the fault of the writers though. A lot happens after the initial writing process in a game’s development. Jason Schreier, news editor for Kotaku and a veteran game industry journalist, notes many of the instances that may cause a game’s story to change during development in his book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. Specifically, when talking about Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, he mentions multiple instances of how “crunch” can affect a game’s development causing storylines, plot points, and scenes to get left on the cutting room floor. Schreier mentions the term “crunch” a lot in his book, and it refers to the extra work and hours a development team must put in to make sure the game is finished on time for its announced release date (Schreier, 31-33). This can be one of the most detrimental things to a game’s development, and completely derail the original idea, ruining the entire concept of a game in the process. Although writing may be one of the most important aspects of a game’s development, and what may enviably be the deciding factor in its quality, it’s clearly not the only thing that affects the finished product.

Ultimately, the main objective of most video game creators is to make something a player will keep coming back to, and most of the time focusing on storytelling is not how to do that. Most games now receive content updates after their release to keep players returning, but it’s rarely story-driven content. It’s mostly cosmetic or something basic, like a time trial mode or survival mode that serves no purpose to the story. One indicator that video game stories are being taken more seriously is the rise in the video game to television and movie adaptations. The Last of Us series is now being hailed as the first good video game adaptation and is being hailed as the new gold standard for how to adapt games to movies, just like the game itself set the gold standard for motion capture performances. Even though storytelling in games is becoming more complex and movie-like, it will be a while longer before it becomes the standard medium for storytelling. For now, that title remains with books, although movies and television are arguably a close second.

References

Alexander, Sonya. “Interview with ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ Video Game Writer Ian Ryan.” Script, 16 Jun. 2021, https://scriptmag.com/multi-media/interview-with-ghost-of-tsushima-video-game-writer-ian-ryan. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Bitner, Brian and Michael Tucker. “The Last of Us (feat. Writer and Director Neil Druckmann),” Youtube, uploaded by Lessons from the Screenplay, 4 Dec. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FGlIGYcBos. 

Meyer-Lorey, Robin. “Actress Explains Why Some Major Film Actors are Moving to Video Games.” Game Rant, 17 Jan. 2023, https://gamerant.com/far-cry-6-cyberpunk-2077-why-movie-actors-video-games-anna-rust/. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Ochami, Fredrick. “20 Best Video Games with Hollywood Actors.” The Gamer, 17 Mar. 2023, https://www.thegamer.com/best-video-games-with-hollywood-actors/#twelve-minutes—james-mcavoy-daisy-ridley-and-willem-dafoe. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Picht, Matt. “Why Video Games Are Looking More Like Movies.” Youtube, uploaded by Scripps News, 22 Sep. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBZeYnRVtyM.

Richter, Felix. “Are You Not Entertained?” Statista, 12 Dec. 2022, https://www.statista.com/chart/22392/global-revenue-of-selected-entertainment-industry-sectors/. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Schreier, Jason. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. Harper, 2017.

Van Pelt, Jennifer. “The History of Storytelling.” Word Alive, 5 Sep. 2018, https://www.wordsalive.org/blog/2018/9/5/the-history-of-storytelling#:~:text=The%20Chauvet%20cave%20in%20France,on%20News.Artnet.com. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Warner, Noelle. “Video Games That Stay with You.” Youtube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 18 Mar. 2018, https://youtu.be/a9_L-D2zytM.